Platform Architect in London

We are seeking an experienced and forward-thinking Platform Architect to define and evolve the strategic direction of our platforms, automation capabilities, and engineering practices. This role sits at the intersection of architecture, platform engineering, and reliability, ensuring that our platforms are secure, scalable, and designed to enable development teams to deliver high-quality solutions efficiently.

As a Platform Architect, you will provide technical leadership across the platform lifecycle, guiding design decisions, setting standards, and ensuring alignment with organisational goals. You will work closely with engineers, developers, operations teams, and stakeholders, balancing hands-on technical engagement with strategic oversight. This role requires deep expertise in platform design and automation, combined with strong communication, leadership, and decision-making skills.

Key Responsibilities

• Platform Strategy & Architecture
  • Define and own the platform architecture strategy, ensuring alignment with business and technology objectives.
  • Design end-to-end platform solutions covering infrastructure, automation, CI/CD, and operational tooling.
  • Establish architectural principles, patterns, and standards (e.g., IaC, GitOps, immutable infrastructure).
  • Drive consistency, reuse, and standardisation across platforms and environments.
  • Evaluate emerging technologies and guide their adoption through proof of concepts and strategic roadmaps.
  • Work with architects and principal architects across practices to define roadmaps and architecture.
• Platform Engineering & Automation Leadership
  • Provide technical direction for CI/CD pipeline design, automation frameworks, and Infrastructure as Code practices.
  • Ensure platforms are designed for scalability, resilience, and operational efficiency.
  • Champion automation-first approaches to reduce manual effort and increase reliability.
  • Oversee the design and implementation of reusable platform components and shared services.
• Architecture Governance & Design Authority
  • Act as a design authority for platform-related initiatives, reviewing and approving architectural decisions.
  • Ensure solutions meet non-functional requirements including performance, scalability, security, and maintainability.
  • Produce and govern high-quality architectural artefacts (diagrams, standards, reference architectures).
  • Lead design workshops and contribute to technical decision-making across projects.
• Collaboration & Technical Leadership
  • Work closely with engineering, development, operations, and security teams to ensure alignment and successful delivery.
  • Provide mentorship and technical leadership to Platform Engineers and wider engineering teams.
  • Promote DevOps and SRE best practices across the organisation.
  • Enable teams by defining clear platform capabilities, usage patterns, and self-service models.
• Security, Risk & Compliance
  • Ensure secure-by-design principles are embedded in all platform architectures.
  • Guide platform-level security controls, identity management, and compliance requirements.
  • Oversee vulnerability management strategies and platform hardening approaches.
  • Align platform design with regulatory and organisational compliance standards.

Skills & Experience

• Essential Skills
  • Extensive experience designing and implementing platform architectures in Agile/DevOps environments.
  • Strong expertise in Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Ansible, ARM, DSC, or equivalent).
  • Deep knowledge of CI/CD tooling and delivery patterns (GitLab CI/CD, Jenkins, GitHub Actions).
  • Experience with containerisation and orchestration platforms (Docker, Kubernetes, Podman).
  • Strong understanding of cloud and hybrid infrastructure (Azure, Azure Stack Hub, or similar).
  • Proficiency in scripting and automation (e.g., Python, PowerShell, Bash).
  • Experience designing secure, scalable, and highly available systems.
  • Strong documentation and communication skills, with the ability to produce clear architectural artefacts.
  • Ability to influence, guide, and align multiple teams and stakeholders.
• Desirable Skills
  • Experience defining platform strategies or roadmaps at an organisational level.
  • Knowledge of observability and monitoring solutions (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, Splunk).
  • Experience implementing SRE practices (SLIs, SLOs, error budgets).
  • Familiarity with compliance frameworks and continuous compliance tooling.
  • Experience with large-scale or enterprise platform transformation initiatives.
  • Exposure to GitOps and modern platform engineering practices.
  • Strong stakeholder management and customer engagement experience.

What Success Looks Like

• You define and deliver a coherent platform strategy that supports scalable, secure, and efficient delivery.
• You establish standards and architectures that are widely adopted across engineering teams.
• You enable teams through self-service platforms, automation, and clear design patterns.
• You proactively identify opportunities to simplify, standardise, and modernise platform capabilities.
• You act as a trusted technical leader, guiding teams and influencing strategic decisions across the organisation.
• You foster a culture of continuous improvement, collaboration, and engineering excellence.