Head of Architecture

Your team

We power the products our customers love by building and operating the foundational Infrastructure & Platforms that UKI engineering depends on — cloud and hosting platforms, networks, core services, and the guardrails that keep them safe. When the business drives forward, our platforms enable progress by providing the foundations for success.

We power the products our customers love by building and operating the foundational Infrastructure & Platforms that UKI engineering depends on — cloud and hosting platforms, networks, core services, and the guardrails that keep them safe. When the business drives forward, our platforms enable progress by providing the foundations for success. We’re engineers, architects and leaders who take ownership, reduce complexity, and turn stability and standards into momentum for the teams building customer experiences across our brands.

This role sets the technical direction for Infrastructure & Platforms and runs the architecture practice that keeps our platforms coherent, secure‑by‑design, and strategically aligned. We operate in a business‑critical environment, this role is key to reducing complexity of our tech so teams can move faster, safer, and at lower cost. You’ll be the technical authority across the tribe, working closely with the Chief Architect and UK&I architecture community to ensure our platform choices are deliberate, reusable, and built to scale.

• Set and drive the architecture strategy for Infrastructure & Platforms, standards, guardrails, and design authority through clear ADRs and forums.
• Lead solution design for the most complex, cross‑tribe initiatives, ensuring architectures are robust, scalable and secure‑by‑design.
• Reduce tech complexity by driving simplification, reuse, and disciplined technology selection and lifecycle management.
• Partner with Product, Engineering and senior leaders to translate strategic requirements into actionable technical plans and clear decision points.
• Run architecture governance that accelerates delivery, fast decisions, clear rationale, lightweight process, and decisions revisited when needed.
• Identify technical risk early and shape mitigations before build, reliability, performance, security, and operational readiness.
• Build an architecture community of practice, mentoring architects and senior engineers, raising standards and improving consistency.
• Influence roadmaps, balancing opportunity, cost, and risk in technology choices and platform evolution.

• Deep, broad architecture experience across infrastructure, hosting and platform domains (cloud/on‑prem, networks, core services, resilience, security).
• Proven track record leading architecture practice in a fast‑paced online/ecommerce environment, comfortable influencing at senior levels.
• Strong judgement in technology selection, lifecycle management, and simplification — knowing when to standardise and when to flex.
• Experience designing and governing large‑scale, complex initiatives spanning multiple teams and domains.
• Ability to spot technical risk early and steer mitigations without creating heavyweight process.
• Excellent communication skills, able to simplify complex decisions for technical and non‑technical audiences.

• Establish a clear view of the current architecture landscape, gaps in Strategic capabilities, hotspots, lifecycle risks, and priority decisions blocking delivery.
• Reset the architecture operating rhythm: forums, ADR discipline, decision SLAs, and a lightweight governance model that accelerates teams.
• Shape and steer 2–3 of the highest‑impact cross‑tribe initiatives, ensuring security‑by‑design, operability, and scalability are built in.
• Launch a simplification and reuse agenda with measurable outcomes: fewer platforms/patterns, higher reuse rate, less sprawl.
• Strengthen the community of practice: mentoring coverage, capability uplift, and visible alignment across architects and principal engineers.

• £/€1,000 learning fund
• Twice‑yearly bonus (with part of it guaranteed!)
• Unlimited Holiday
• Pension contribution scheme
• Private healthcare
• Hybrid Working
• Access to thousands of…