Group Architect

Job Location:

Milton Keynes, Remote/Hybrid

Closing Date: 11 January 2026

Weekly

Working Hours:

37

Contract Type:
Permanent

Fixed Term

Contract:

End Date:
Not Applicable

Welsh Language:
Not Applicable

The Open University is the UK’s largest university, a world leader in flexible part-time education combining a mission to widen access to higher education with research excellence, transforming lives through education. Find out more about us and our mission by watching this short video (you will be taken to You Tube by clicking this link).

We are currently looking for 3 Group Architects. As a Group Architect, you will be a technical leader and a problem solver, with a “can-do” attitude, tackling complex technical challenges and driving solutions through effective team collaboration. Working with multiple product teams, you will define the target architecture for the entire domain – including the business, application, data, infrastructure, components and the cost.

You will support continuous conversational architecture governance by collaborating with many product teams within the domain to ensure that they understand the target architecture and that all technology changes in the domain are aligned to University strategy, policies and standards, as well as being aware of how new trends could help the teams solve challenging problems more effectively. You will be an active member of the wider architecture profession, mentoring and managing others in the support of shared learning.

• Work closely with software developers, IT operations, and other stakeholders to understand their requirements and translate them into effective cloud solutions. Provide technical leadership and mentorship to engineering teams.
• Contribute to the definition and execution of OU technology strategies, within the domain and in other areas as needed. Make decisions around the technology landscape in a collaborative manner with teams inside the domain and across the wider University.
• Co-create and document the target architecture, reference architectures, policies and standards – sharing these with teams to support faster delivery of features whilst meeting expectations around Security, Stability, Scalability, Speed and Spend.
• Act as an advocate for continuous conversational architecture governance– ensuring that solutions are aligned to strategy, policy, standards.
• Support the team in balancing the tension between build, run and improve – managing key metrics and ensuring that compromises are understood and documented, with mitigations included in the overall product roadmap.
• Keep up to date with trends in Higher Education, technology, architecture and engineering - advocating an attitude to be open to new ways of working which could improve productivity and delivery.
• Be a trusted advisor to the Head of Enterprise Architecture, the Head of Engineering for the domain and across the wider University, and in the development of the architecture profession.
• Support the re-use and availability of trusted data, through use of approved integration and data sharing tools, in order to support the OU in making good decisions.
• Participate in show and tell sessions, and other activities to share successes with others to celebrate what the team has achieved and enable other teams within the domain or across Digital Services and the University to learn from it.
• Be an active member of the OU architecture profession, supporting other architects and contributing to overall development and knowledge of all architects.

• Experience as a domain or solutions architect including cloud solutions using Azure and AWS, and integration technologies.
• A track record in defining strategy, policies and standards, encompassing MACH and event driven architecture.
• Experience migrating on-premise solutions to Azure, understanding the cost and performance of the solution and how this changes in the new architecture.
• Experience of the shift towards a Dev Ops, CI, CD culture and practices (e.g. automation) to increase flow, frequent feedback and ongoing learning and to support the shared success of achieving team…