Lead Architect - Up to £130k

<p><strong>Lead Architect (Hands-on Manager) </strong></p><p><br><br>Ready to make your application Please do read through the description at least once before clicking on Apply.<br></p><p> Hybrid, London (3 days in office, South London)</p><p> £110,000 - £130,000 + bonus + benefits</p><p><br></p><p>We're partnered with one of the UK’s leading fitness brands on a newly created Lead Architect hire, as they build out an Architecture team function internally</p><p><br></p><p>This isn’t a “maintain the estate” architecture role. They’re in the middle of a major technology transformation across customer platforms, memberships, integrations and mobile experience, all within a business serving close to 1 million active users across 250+ physical locations nationwide</p><p><br></p><p>The scale is genuinely interesting:</p><ul><li>High-volume customer journeys</li><li>Mobile-first member experiences</li><li>Real-time integrations with third-party platforms and connected devices</li><li>Operational telemetry and monitoring systems</li><li>Future-facing work around AI</li></ul><p><br></p><p>Reporting directly to the CTO, you will...</p><ul><li>Operate strategically, managing a team of 3-4 other Architects</li><li>Remain hands-on and technically credible</li><li>Be responsible for shaping the architectural blueprint across the business, defining governance, tooling, standards, and long-term target state architecture</li><li>Bring Applied AI into the systems of the business to automate internal or customer-facing solutions </li><li>Influence both executive-level technology direction and the reality of engineering delivery teams</li><li>Drive architectural governance and technical direction</li><li>Bring strong cloud-native and distributed systems experience</li><li>Understand modern B2C digital products, subscriptions, e-commerce, or app-led businesses</li></ul><p><br></p><p>What they’re looking for:</p><ul><li>Strong Lead Architecture background within scaled digital businesses</li><li>Experience building or evolving architecture functions</li><li>Deep Microsoft Azure OR AWS architecture experience (They use Azure: AKS, App Services, Event Hubs, API Management etc.)</li><li>Strong distributed systems and cloud-native architecture knowledge</li><li>Experience designing high-availability, event-driven systems</li><li>Ability to operate across business, engineering and product stakeholders</li><li>Previous people leadership experience</li><li>Awareness of modern architecture patterns: DDD, Event-driven systems, CQRS, Hexagonal Architecture, Microservices</li><li>Proven experience in driving AI into workflows, teams, and systems</li><li>Understanding of observability, security and compliance considerations</li><li>Ideally some exposure to mobile / customer-facing platforms</li></ul><p><br></p><p>The environment:</p><ul><li>Re-platforming from monolithic systems into event-driven microservices</li><li>Large-scale backend and distributed systems challenges</li><li>Building toward domain-driven architecture and greater engineering autonomy</li><li>Stripe payments transformation</li><li>Major data platform evolution into Microsoft Fabric</li><li>A strategic mobile app rebuild likely centred around React Native</li><li>Strong interest in AI-enabled products, DevEx, and applied AI capabilities</li></ul><p><br></p><p>The environment itself is modern and ambitious without being overly corporate. xwzovoh </p><p><br></p><p>They’ve invested heavily into technology over the last 2 years, particularly across app and customer experience, and this role will play a major part in defining what the future technology organisation looks like.</p>