Technical Solutions Architect

We're recruiting for an experienced Technical Solution Architect to join our Technology team here at Penguin. This role is offered on a permanent basis with hybrid working from our office in Embassy Gardens, London.

This is a senior architecture role with a strong engineering focus. You’ll work to shape and assure our integration architecture, turning wider technology strategy into practical, implementable patterns that our engineering teams can use with confidence.

A key focus of the role will be supporting the modernisation of our integration landscape, as we move away from hundreds of point-to-point and file-based integrations towards a more governed platform of reusable business-domain services, REST APIs, business events and Model Context Protocol (MCP) interfaces on Azure.

You’ll work closely with engineering teams to guide this transition incrementally, helping us to reduce complexity, improve resilience and make change easier, whilst ensuring the stability and continuity of our existing live services. It’s a role for someone who combines credible architecture expertise with recent, hands-on engineering experience and who enjoys working closely with delivery teams to turn architectural direction into solutions that work in practice.

About the team

The Technology team provides expertise and effective solutions to Penguin Random House. We integrate flexibility and agility which supports our consistent way of working. We set ourselves up for success by holding ourselves accountable and welcoming change. Each member of the Technology team brings skill and initiative to their role; we take personal ownership within a one team culture, working collaboratively to meet expectations from our stakeholders who trust us to deliver.

The role

Key responsibilities:

• Own and evolve the target architecture, principles and migration roadmap for Integration Services, defining clear business-domain boundaries, service ownership and stable contracts.
• Set reusable architectural patterns for APIs, business events, adapters, synchronous and asynchronous communication, versioning and compatibility.
• Design Azure integration solutions using services including API Management, Service Bus, Logic Apps, Functions, App Services, Container Apps or AKS, Key Vault and appropriate data services.
• Define non-functional and engineering requirements across security, resilience, performance, scalability, observability, supportability, disaster recovery, infrastructure as code, CI/CD and automated testing.
• Create safe modernisation and coexistence approaches for legacy and partner platforms, including adapter patterns, cutover, rollback and decommissioning.
• Establish secure-by-design standards across identity, authentication, authorisation, secrets and network controls, alongside appropriate governance for MCP and other AI-facing interfaces.
• Maintain hands‑on technical credibility through targeted prototypes, proof‑of‑concepts and technical spikes that help de‑risk important architectural decisions.
• Lead and contribute to architecture reviews, maintaining clear decisions, standards, reference designs and service documentation, while mentoring developers and enabling teams to make sound technical decisions within agreed architecture.
• Partner with Enterprise Architecture, Data Architecture, Security, Cloud Platforms and delivery teams to ensure integration designs align with wider organisational strategy and controls.
• Provide timely architectural guidance during discovery, refinement and delivery, escalating significant enterprise, security, data, commercial or cross‑portfolio risks to the appropriate accountable owner.

What you’ll bring

• Substantial senior software engineering experience followed by credible solution‑architecture accountability in complex production environments.
• Recent hands‑on C# and .NET credibility, including .NET 10+, ASP.NET Core, Web APIs and production microservices.
• Strong domain‑driven design, distributed‑systems and event‑driven architecture practice, including service boundaries, contracts and failure modes.
• Deep Azure integration and platform knowledge: Service Bus, API Management, Logic Apps, Functions, App Services, Container Apps or AKS, Key Vault, Application Insights and Azure Monitor.
• Practical Terraform or other infrastructure‑as‑code delivery, CI/CD automation and automated testing strategy.
• Secure API and service design using OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, JWT and Microsoft Entra ID.
• Ability to balance strategic architecture with delivery pragmatism, operational constraints and incremental migration.
• Strong written and visual architecture communication, senior stakeholder influence and constructive challenge across organisational boundaries.
• SAP, Blue Yonder, BiblioSuite, EDI or broader B2B integration.
• MCP, AI‑agent architectures and governance of AI‑facing services.
• Platform engineering, developer self‑service and product operating models.
• Data modelling, semantic design, event sourcing or operational data ownership within domain services.
• Power Platform integration and governance.
• Vendor assessment, procurement support and technical due diligence.

Here at Penguin, we believe in the power of authenticity and human creativity. When you apply for a position, we want to encourage you to showcase your unique voice. Throughout our recruitment process, please share your own thoughts, experiences, and skills. This helps us get a true sense of who you are and what you might bring to our team.

We celebrate creativity and diverse perspectives, so please be yourself! While we recognise AI tools can be helpful, we recommend using them thoughtfully to ensure your responses reflect you.

Disability Confident

As a Disability Confident Committed organisation, we offer interviews to candidates with a disability who meet the essential criteria for the role, and opt‑in on their application form. The essential criteria for this role are listed as part of the ‘What you’ll bring’ section.

There may be times when the volume of applications means we cannot take all eligible candidates to interview. We encourage you to tell us about any reasonable adjustments you may need by emailing PRHCareersUK@penguinrandomhouse.co.uk. Remember, you only need to share what you are comfortable with, for us to support your request.

The salary for this opportunity is up to £80,000 depending on how your skills and experience align to the role, plus a generous bonus scheme and benefits.

While our offices across the UK are places to connect, collaborate and celebrate with colleagues, we recognise that flexibility around where you work is just as important.

For this role we expect that you will work from our head office in Embassy Gardens, London a minimum of 2 days per week (Tuesday & Thursday) with additional days for team meetings, townhalls etc as required. There may also be occasional travel to our warehouse site in Frating, Colchester.