Overview
Our Principal Architects are responsible for leading the architectural vision and strategy for complex projects across the business. This role involves overseeing the design, planning, and execution of architectural solutions, ensuring they align with business objectives and technical requirements. Principal Architects play a crucial role in guiding teams, managing stakeholder expectations, and driving innovation within the organization.
What You Will Do
* Architectural Vision: Define and lead the architectural vision and strategy for projects.
* Project Oversight: Oversee the design, planning, and execution of architectural solutions.
* Stakeholder Management: Collaborate with stakeholders to understand their needs and ensure alignment with business goals.
* Technical Leadership: Provide technical leadership and mentorship to architectural and engineering teams.
* Quality Assurance: Ensure that architectural designs meet quality standards and comply with industry regulations.
* Innovation: Drive innovation by exploring and implementing new technologies and methodologies.
* Documentation: Create and maintain comprehensive architectural documentation.
* Risk Management: Identify and mitigate risks associated with architectural decisions.
* Resource Allocation: Manage resources effectively to ensure project success.
* Continuous Improvement: Promote a culture of continuous improvement and learning within the architecture team.
What You Will Have
* Technical Expertise: Extensive knowledge of architectural design principles and practices.
* Leadership Skills: Strong leadership and mentorship abilities.
* Communication Skills: Excellent communication skills to interact with stakeholders and team members.
* Analytical Skills: Ability to analyse complex technical problems and develop effective solutions.
* Project Management: Strong project management skills to oversee architectural projects.
* Innovation: Creative thinking to drive innovation and explore new technologies.
* Collaboration: Strong collaboration skills to work effectively with cross-functional teams.
* Attention to Detail: High attention to detail to ensure architectural quality and compliance.
* Adaptability: Flexibility to adapt to new technologies and changing business needs.
* Industry Knowledge: Extensive knowledge of industry standards and best practices
* Enterprise Microservices Architecture
o Proven track record in designing and governing large-scale, event-driven, domain-oriented microservice solutions.
o Ability to enforce clear boundaries (bounded contexts, APIs, contracts, data ownership).
o Skilled in the “strangler pattern,” saga orchestration, CQRS, and event sourcing.
* Migration & Modernisation Expertise
o Deep knowledge of migration models (strangler fig, re-platforming, re-hosting, re-architecting).
o Experienced in managing hybrid environments where legacy and modern services coexist.
o Strong background in API “bridges” / universal APIs to enable gradual cutover without technical debt.
* Cloud Architecture (AWS & Azure)
o Hands-on experience architecting resilient, secure, and cost-optimised workloads on both AWS and Azure.
o Proficient in managed services (e.g., AWS ECS/EKS, Azure AKS, Event Grid, Service Bus, Lambda, Logic Apps).
o Skilled in multi-cloud and hybrid patterns, including networking, identity, and data integration.
* Security, Compliance & Governance Mindset
o Strong command of cloud security (IAM, zero-trust, encryption, secrets management).
o Knowledge of UK/EU data regulations (GDPR, safeguarding, data residency).
o Ability to build secure-by-design reference architectures and align with enterprise security policies.
* Data & Integration Strategy
o Expertise in designing data pipelines across operational, analytical, and event-driven layers.
o Mastery of messaging patterns (Kafka, Event Hub, SNS/SQS), API management, and data mesh/federation approaches.
o Clear strategy for legacy database integration and data migration with minimal downtime.
* Scalability, Resilience & Performance Engineering
o Ability to design architectures with high availability, disaster recovery, and observability baked in.
o Proven experience with distributed caching, load balancing, multi-region failover, and chaos engineering practices.
o Hands-on with SLAs, SLOs, SLIs, and performance tuning at enterprise scale.
* SRE & Platform Engineering Leadership
o Expert in CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Bicep, CloudFormation).
o Skilled in embedding reliability engineering principles (monitoring, alerting, auto-healing).
o Ability to mentor platform engineering teams to build reusable accelerators and golden paths.
* AI-Delivered & AI-Enhanced Architecture
o Ability to integrate AI agents and AI-powered services into the SDLC and architecture.
o Experience with AI in governance (code quality, compliance checks), delivery acceleration (AI code generation, testing), and operational insights (predictive monitoring, anomaly detection).
o Understanding of responsible AI, compliance, and human-in-the-loop orchestration.
* Strategic Stakeholder Management & Communication
o Able to translate complex architectures into clear, business-aligned roadmaps for executives.
o Skilled at bridging product, engineering, and operations with a common architecture vision.
o Excellent at governance boards, architecture review forums, and C-suite presentations.
* Innovation Drive
o Ability to anticipate technology shifts (AI-native services, edge computing, serverless).
o Inspire teams to adopt best practices while balancing delivery velocity with long-term maintainability.
o Capable of setting and evolving architecture standards, patterns, and frameworks across the enterprise.
Note: This description focuses on the Principal Architect role and related capabilities. It does not include the broader job postings, locations, or extraneous postings listed in the original text.
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