Technical Architect

Most architecture jobs are a seat on a well-oiled machine. This one is building the machine: new practice, new platform, a design authority that is still deciding what good looks like, and a head of architecture who wants your fingerprints on all of it.

This is a solutions architect seat in a brand new architecture practice. You will produce the HLDs that a technical design authority approves and in-house engineers build from, set the patterns and standards for an integration layer that is being rebuilt properly for the first time, and shape how architecture works in an organisation that has not had it before.

You will sit close to the business. There is no layer between architecture and the people who own the processes, so the job is as much about explaining a design choice to a service director as it is about making it. The head of architecture built the integration strategy you will be delivering against and is hiring two architects to deliver it with him.

The employer is a large not-for-profit, Microsoft throughout, partway through a major technology investment following a restructure. The estate is mostly commercial platforms connected by an ageing SQL Server and SSIS integration layer; the replacement is built on Azure Service Bus and Azure Integration Services and the first workloads are live.

What you will be doing

• Owning high-level design for application and integration change, from options through to design authority approval
• Leading the redesign of a legacy point-to-point integration estate onto the managed Azure platform
• Setting integration patterns, standards and reusable building blocks for the engineering team
• Governing supplier and third-party designs against your patterns
• Working day to day with business analysts to turn requirements into well-formed, buildable designs

What you will need

• An established track record as a solution or technical architect producing HLDs that others build from
• Applications and integration as your primary discipline
• Design judgement across Azure Integration Services, Service Bus and Logic Apps foremost, with API Management, Functions and Event Grid behind
• Experience moving a legacy or point-to-point integration estate onto a managed Azure layer
• Comfort operating without mature standards, and helping to write them
• The ability to hold your own with senior non-technical stakeholders and be trusted by them

Useful, not essential

• TOGAF or BCS architecture certification
• BizTalk or SSIS background
• Dynamics 365 or Power Platform exposure
• Regulated sector experience