Managing Architect in City of London

Aker Systems was founded in 2017 by a team of experienced technology professionals who recognised an opportunity to provide highly secure enterprise data platforms to large organisations. Aker builds and operates ground-breaking, ultra-secure, high performance, cloud-based data infrastructure for the enterprise. Our proprietary technology solutions drive performance and reduce costs while helping our clients to improve the management and sharing of data across their organisations.

In 2022, Aker Systems was proud to win the Scale up Business of the Year award by the British Business Excellence Awards. In 2020 Aker Systems was recognised as a One to Watch on the Sunday Times Tech Track and was also recognised at the Thames Valley Tech Awards 2020; winning the Thames Valley Tech Company of the year, the Emerging Tech Company and High Growth Tech Business categories. Most recently in September 2021, we were successfully acquired by a new investor (Abry Partners) who have a deep industry expertise in our field to support us in the next part of our journey and as we continue to grow and diversify as a business.

As Managing Architect, you will be passionate about digital, data and technology-led transformation, unlocking innovation for our clients, and providing leadership throughout the client engagements. The applicant who possesses knowledge and experience of Public Sector (Central Government) and understands their governance and security processes, preferably across multiple government departments, is strongly preferred. A UK Government Security Check (SC) clearance is required for this role. If you do not hold SC clearance, we will support you to apply assuming you have lived and worked in the UK for a minimum of 5 years. Due to the nature of the projects, British citizenship is required.

Duties & Responsibilities

• Aker Managing Architect is primarily a client delivery, management, and growth role, expected to be 90% or more of the time across one or more client assignments.
• Technical Leadership: Part of the client leadership team as the Client CTO for assigned projects/services, supporting the Client Delivery Director, Client Account Director and the delivery team to ensure we deliver against all client deliverables and payment milestones.
• Lead Architect: Lead solution, data, cloud, service and security architects/engineers during design and delivery projects and services, and responsible for delivering design documents and other key artefacts to support governance and delivery.
• Senior Influencer: Need to be a leader and able to influence through excellent communication skills. You will relish collaboration and embrace challenges. You will understand the nuances of business and be driven to find new solutions for our clients' biggest problems.
• Team-Focussed: Expected to build effective working relationships with delivery team members and Aker customers and operate without supervision as the technical lead across multiple projects and platforms and mentoring less-experienced client team members as required.
• Capability and Growth: Aker is a fast-growing business, so for any remaining % of time when not on client work, it is contributing to the future success of Aker by helping develop capabilities and supporting the other functions such as Sales and Product, and always looking to help grow existing accounts.

Essential Experience and Competencies

The successful candidate will need to have experience as a lead or managing architect across these core areas:

• Delivery - designing, delivering platforms and managed services at enterprise scale, specifically bespoke software solutions, particularly in streaming and cloud-native solutions.
• Data Platforms - designing modern data platforms with appropriate architecture covering Data Mesh, Data Fabric, Data Lake etc.
• Data/Analytics - solving enterprise data and analytics problems using technology.
• Cloud - hands-on Public Cloud experience in either AWS/Azure/Google, both their services and how to work in the cloud such as DevOps-centric approach.
• Security - having worked in sensitive data environments and ideally have experience facing off to cyber security specialists.

The successful candidate will meet all of the following essential criteria:

• Demonstrable experience in designing large scale cloud migration projects/programmes with open source and commercial software within AWS, Azure, GCP or hybrid.
• Experience in operating within a multi-disciplined team and clearly communicating complex technology solutions to technical and non-technical people.
• Experience designing event processing and async messaging architectures.
• Experience applying latest technologies to solve complex problems and to develop innovative data and analytical solutions.
• Working knowledge of cloud orchestration and containerisation technologies, such as Docker and Kubernetes.
• Working knowledge of DevOps, CI/CD and Infrastructure-as-Code.
• Understanding of NCSC Cloud Security Principles and its practical implementations.

Aker Systems Attributes

At Aker we work as a team, we are collaborative, hardworking, open, and delivery obsessed. There is no blame culture here: try things, and take responsibility for the outcomes. You are always part of the wider Aker. We help out our colleagues and take pride in successfully achieving difficult tasks. We run towards problems and help solve them. Communicate always, do so accurately and in a timely fashion.

In return, we offer a competitive salary, 25 days holiday (excluding bank holidays), Company Paid Medical Insurance, Life Assurance (4x times basic salary), Pension scheme, Perks at Work, Cycle Scheme, Tech Scheme and Season Ticket Loan. Plus, a list of voluntary benefits including Dental Insurance, Critical illness cover, Virtual GP.

Equal Opportunities

Aker Systems fosters a diverse environment that encourages openness in its communications and is committed to providing equal employment opportunity for all people regardless of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation, age, marital status, national origin, citizenship status, disability, veteran status or other personal characteristics. We embrace differences of opinion and diversity because they help challenge us and find new groundbreaking technical solutions.