Head of Architecture

Salary: £100,000 - 100,000 per year

Requirements

• We are seeking a senior architect or principal-level professional with a proven track record of breaking down complex legacy platforms.
• We require strong experience with C# and .NET, including both Framework and modern .NET.
• We require solid Azure cloud experience.
• We require experience with SQL Server at scale.
• We require experience with RabbitMQ, Redis, and CI/CD.
• We need someone who can read any part of a large codebase and quickly understand what it does.
• We are looking for significant experience as a senior architect or principal engineer on a complex, multi-year platform.
• We need proven experience evolving a live system under delivery pressure.
• We require hands-on experience with gradual decomposition of legacy systems, including strangler patterns, service boundary definition, and data migration sequencing.
• We require experience operating in a regulated environment such as PCI DSS, ISO 27001, Cyber Essentials, or equivalent.
• We need a proven ability to influence without authority and drive standards adoption across teams that do not report to us.
• We are looking for evidence of running a forum, guild, or chapter model and the outcomes it produced.
• We require strong written and verbal communication skills across technical and commercial audiences.
• We are looking for experience mentoring and growing senior engineers.
• We need someone comfortable defining engineering standards, integration patterns, and cross-service contracts.
• We require eligibility to work in the UK without sponsorship, with British citizenship or Indefinite Leave to Remain.

Responsibilities

• We will rely on you to stand up the architecture function from scratch, including the target architecture, ARB process, Architecture Guild, and engineering standards.
• We expect you to define and maintain a living 12-24 month target architecture covering what stays, what moves, when, and the service boundaries.
• We need you to build the ARB process, including templates, cadence, and traceable decision-making.
• We want you to run the Architecture Guild as the channel for driving standards into teams that do not report to us.
• We will ask you to sequence decomposition by building a principled backlog for which parts of the monolith to tackle first and why.
• We need you to drive the move from infrastructure-level monitoring to outcome-based SLOs such as latency, error rate, and user impact.
• We want you to partner with our Principal Security Engineer on technical security posture.
• We expect you to publish engineering standards covering coding conventions, integration patterns, observability, and cross-service contracts.
• We will rely on you to support technical hiring through calibration, interview panels, and shaping the technical bar.
• You will be the senior-most individual contributor in engineering and the technical authority the teams unify behind.
• You will join design sessions, read code, and drive coherence across the platform through influence rather than command.

Technologies

• Architect
• Azure
• C#
• CI/CD
• Cloud
• Support
• RabbitMQ
• Redis
• SQL
• Security
• ASP.NET
• Kubernetes
• TOGAF
• microservices

More

We are an established, profitable UK software business operating a mission-critical, high-volume transactional platform that processes billions of transactions in a regulated environment. This is an exclusive, brand-new hire through Optimal for a fully remote UK permanent role with a salary of up to £100,000 plus excellent benefits. We are looking for a high-impact architecture leader who will shape the technical direction of the platform and bring strong Principal Engineers, Tech Leads, and a Principal Security Engineer together behind one coherent approach. This is not a line-management role and not a hands-on feature-development role; it is a senior technical leadership position focused on architecture, standards, and influence.

last updated 30 week of 2026