Head of Architecture

Job Description

We are News UK Technology: using technology to innovate and lead the global conversation on the future of media and storytelling. We keep people at the heart of our business through value-driven and inclusive practices enabling our staff to grow and thrive. As such, we are proud members of Tech Talent Charter UK with 34% of our Tech roles filled by gender minorities.

News UK Tech is an award-winning team, winning Team of the Year at the UK Business and Innovation Awards, 2023.

We play a pivotal role in shaping the technological landscape of our enterprise while ensuring efficiency, security, and scalability across all engineering endeavours.

Our software architecture team collaborates closely with business, product, and platform teams to drive informed decision-making that aligns with our overarching enterprise goals. With a primary focus on simplification and optimisation, this team leads strategic initiatives aimed at streamlining our technological infrastructure. By identifying and eliminating redundancies, unnecessary software, and services, they pave the way for accelerated innovation and agility in the future.

In parallel, our engineering productivity team is dedicated to implementing and enforcing cybersecurity policies and best practices across the organisation. This includes but is not limited to disaster recovery planning and secrets management. By centralising these efforts, we ensure consistency, reliability, and compliance while relieving individual engineering teams from the burden of developing their own solutions.

As the Head of Architecture, you will play a pivotal role in ensuring alignment between digital teams' objectives and architectural decisions with the technology and engineering strategies set forth by senior leadership. Your passion for software engineering and architecture, coupled with a commitment to nurturing talent and fostering a culture of excellence, will be instrumental in driving the organisation towards world-class engineering practices.

• Lead the software architecture discipline across the digital technology estate.
• Provide architectural direction to business and digital technology teams.
• Develop and maintain architectural blueprints and reference architectures in line with business objectives.

• Maintain in-depth knowledge of strategic plans across the business.
• Develop and maintain an enterprise-wide technology roadmap aligned with strategic goals.

• Facilitate the establishment of best practices for end-to-end system design and implementation.
• Specify and maintain processes such as the Request for Comment (RFC) process to guide teams in digital product development.

• Cultivate a centralised knowledge repository and disseminate information widely across teams.
• Stay forward-looking on industry trends, emerging technologies, and best practices.

• Cultivate relationships with business stakeholders to understand their needs.
• Chair the Architecture Design Authority (ADA) to review significant initiatives and design changes.

• Ensure technology solutions are cost-effective, scalable, and compliant with regulations and standards.
• Work with the technology team to design and implement solutions meeting business needs.

• Manage the Architecture team (4 direct reports based in London).
• Manage the Engineering Productivity team (2 direct reports, 7 people based in Bulgaria). Currently focused on implementing cybersecurity policy and improving engineering standards.
• Provide guidance, leadership, mentoring, and coaching to the technology team.

You should be passionate about software engineering & architecture as well as the culture needed to truly practise it. You should want to nurture and develop talent and teams as well as the communities both internal and external (open source) needed to truly build world class engineering organisations.

• A Strategic-minded individual adept at translating business objectives into tangible architectural plans and solutions, while crafting and implementing long-term architectural roadmaps aligned with business goals.
• A skilled engineer with recent and relevant software engineering experience, demonstrating proficiency in managing complex technology ecosystems, particularly within AWS and GCP. Capable of building innovative and impactful products across multiple platforms, with specific expertise in Cloud Front, EKS, Lambda, SNS, SQS, S3, EC2, Dynamo
  
  DB, and Aurora. Proficient in programming languages including , JavaScript, Type Script, Java, and Python, along with database management systems such as MySQL and Postgres.
• Proven leader with a track record of building and leading high-performing teams, fostering a culture of excellence and collaboration to drive success in architectural initiatives aligned with…