SmartSearch's distinctive Anti-Money Laundering verification software protects our clients by offering the most advanced and comprehensive features available from an AML provider.
SmartSearch has grown rapidly by fostering an incredibly collaborative and supportive culture. As we continue our ambitious growth plans, we will strive to remain a truly exciting, rewarding, and unique place to work.
HOW WILL YOU MAKE A DIFFERENCE?
We are unifying two mature product estates and multiple internal systems into a single organisation that delivers a seamless customer experience, consistent data foundation, and scalable commercial growth.
As our Enterprise Architect, you will shape the endtoend platform strategy-spanning applications, integration, data, AI, and security-to ensure the organisation operates as one. Your mandate is to design and socialise a customercentric, APIfirst, identityaware, governed and observable architecture that accelerates product innovation, reduces operational friction, and strengthens trust with clients.
You will stay close enough to the technology to produce reference implementations that derisk adoption, while influencing senior stakeholders across Product, Engineering, Commercial, Finance, Compliance and Customer Operations to ensure architectural decisions are businessaligned, commercially viable, and safe for customers.
VARIED DAY TO DAY RESPONSIBILITIES
Enterprise Target State Architecture (CustomerCentric North Star)
* Define the futurestate architecture across applications, data, integration, security and operations, anchored in customer experience, commercial strategy, and regulatory requirements.
* Map current target states with clear transition phases that minimise customer disruption and support predictable delivery.
* Establish nonfunctional baselines (reliability, performance, DR, security, cost) that directly support customer SLAs and commercial commitments.
* Provide clear architectural principles and guardrails that enable teams to move quickly without compromising safety or coherence.
Integration & Platform Unification (Internal + SaaS + Product Estate)
* Design an APIfirst integration fabric that connects internal systems, SaaS platforms, and product estates into a unified operating environment.
* Define Azure integration patterns (APIM, Functions/App Service, Service Bus/Event Hubs, Logic Apps) and Entra ID identity standards to ensure secure, leastprivilege access across the ecosystem.
* Publish interface contracts, versioning policies, and changecontrol processes that protect customer experience and operational stability.
* Maintain a live catalogue of interfaces, dependencies, and data flows to support impact analysis, risk management, and transparent governance.
EnterpriseWide Data Strategy & Canonical Models (Transactional + Analytical)
* Own the organisationwide data strategy, covering transactional data structures, analytical models, lineage, governance, privacy, and consumption.
* Establish Microsoft Fabric as the governed backbone for enterprise data (OneLake, lakehouse/warehouse, medallion zones, pipelines/dataflows).
* Define systemsofrecord and canonical models (customer, agreement, usage, billing, financials) that ensure consistency across products, operations, and reporting.
* Set dataquality thresholds, lineage standards, and auditability requirements that support regulatory compliance and customer trust.
* Partner with Product, Commercial and Customer Operations to ensure data structures enable revenue growth, customer insights, and operational efficiency.
AI & Agentic Orchestration Layer (ForwardLooking Capability)
* Evaluate and design an orchestration layer that exposes common capabilities and integrates agenticnative APIs/AI (tooluse/function calling, retrieval, policyaware orchestration).
* Define safety, privacy, observability, and cost guardrails to ensure AIenabled features are customersafe and commercially viable.
* Shape a pragmatic pilot scale path that demonstrates measurable value (latency reduction, costtoserve improvements, operational automation).
Governance, Roadmap & Executive Communication
* Run a lean, transparent Architecture Review cadence that accelerates decisionmaking and reduces ambiguity.
* Publish a quarterly architecture roadmap aligned to customer commitments, commercial priorities, and product release cycles.
* Provide concise, evidenceled reporting to the ELT and Board on progress, risks, and value delivered.
* Ensure architectural decisions are understood, adopted, and embedded across the organisation.
Value Realisation & CustomerSafe Change
* Track reliability, latency, costtoserve, adoption and customer impact against plan.
* Demonstrate customersafe migrations with rehearsed runbooks, rollback plans, and clear communication.
* Drive decommissioning of redundant services, interfaces and data stores to reduce complexity and cost.
* Hand over a repeatable governance model that ensures longterm stewardship of the platform and data estate.
WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR IN A CANDIDATE?
* Enterprise/Solution Architecture across mixed stacks (ideally .NET and PHP) with strong SQL Server/MySQL fundamentals.
* Handson coding for PoCs/reference builds (modern .NET or PHP, SQL).
* Deep Azure integration experience (APIM, Functions/App Service, Service Bus/Event Hubs, Logic Apps) with strong grounding in resilience, DR, observability and cost optimisation.
* Proven delivery of Microsoft Fabric (OneLake, lakehouse/warehouse, pipelines/dataflows, Power BI) with governance, lineage and privacy controls.
* Demonstrated ownership of enterprise data strategy, including transactional and analytical data structures.
* Experience integrating SaaS platforms at scale and defining systemofrecord/goldenrecord strategies.
* Exposure to agentic/LLM patterns (tooluse, evals/telemetry, guardrails) in production or scoped pilots.
* Strong stakeholder management and the ability to communicate clearly with executives, engineers and customers.
WHAT IS LIFE LIKE AT SMARTSEARCH?
* We are a multi-award winning Tech company with an aspirational mentality
* Some of our most recent recognitions include: named in the renowned RegTech100 list for 2024, listed in the Top 100 Fasted Growing Tech Companies by Northern Tech Awards 2024 as well as being named Technology Provider of the Year by Corporate Finance Awards 2024
* We have been Great Place To Work Certified since 2022
* There are excellent progression opportunities due to our growth and you will have personal development goals, regular feedback and support
* We are a diverse and inclusive team committed to promoting Diversity & Inclusion and Social Responsibility. Through our DE&I group, charitable initiatives and support for local schools, we actively foster a positive Impact on our community
COMPANY BENEFITS
Our comprehensive benefit package includes:
* 25 days holiday rising to 30 with each year of service
* Private Medical Insurance covering dental and optical
* Company pension scheme
* Life Assurance - 4x your annual salary
* 1 day paid volunteering per year
* Enhanced maternity / paternity offerings
* Employee Assistance Programme
* Cycle to work scheme
* On site gym