Lead Technical Architect in Manchester

Hippo Digital is a rapidly growing digital consultancy passionate about building and delivering transformative digital solutions for a diverse range of Public and Private sector clients. We work at the intersection of strategy, design, and technology to solve complex problems and create lasting value. Our collaborative and agile culture empowers our teams to make a genuine impact.

As a Lead Technical Architect, you will be a leader and trusted advisor, responsible for shaping the architectural vision and technical strategy for both our clients and our internal practice. Your scope extends beyond individual projects; you will mentor and guide other architects, help to lead our technical thought leadership, and act as a key contributor to growth. You will influence C-suite level stakeholders, define architectural standards, and help to drive our technical direction in a high-impact, influential capacity. Our solutions empower our customers to build and support secure, scalable, and well-engineered systems beyond traditional boundaries. We leverage deep data insights and continuous innovation to deliver awesome platforms that allow our customers to understand and get the most from their data and digital services.

Your role in a nutshell:

• Help define and evangelise the architectural vision, standards, and best practices across the entire Hippo Digital delivery practice.
• Serve as a trusted advisor to senior client stakeholders, including C-level executives, to guide their long-term technical strategy and digital transformation initiatives.
• Lead complex and strategic technical engagements, providing architectural oversight and quality assurance.
• Mentor and coach our team of technical architects and senior engineers, helping them grow their skills and impact.
• Drive pre-sales and business development activities, leading the technical response to bids, conducting technical due diligence, and shaping new opportunities.
• Contribute to Hippo Digital's thought leadership through public speaking, writing, and community engagement.
• Act as a technical authority, making and communicating key architectural decisions that impact multiple projects or clients.

Skills and experience that you need:

• Extensive, senior-level experience as a Technical Architect, with a proven track record of leading large-scale digital transformations.
• Demonstrated expertise in designing and implementing complex architectures across one or more major public cloud platforms (e.g., Azure, AWS, GCP), including proven experience with multi-cloud strategies.
• A deep, strategic understanding of cloud-native technology stacks, with hands-on experience in containerization (Docker, Kubernetes) or serverless deployments and advanced CI/CD tooling (GitLab CI/CD).
• Exceptional skills in Infrastructure-as-Code, with extensive experience using Terraform for complex, repeatable deployments.
• A history of providing technical leadership and mentoring to other architects and engineering teams.
• Proven ability to influence and communicate effectively with C-suite and executive-level stakeholders.
• Experience in a consultancy environment, including contributing to pre-sales, proposals, and business growth.
• Expert-level knowledge of security, networking, and governance principles in a cloud context.

What makes us great:

• Contributory pension scheme (Hippo 6% with employee contributions of 2%)
• 25 days holiday plus UK public holidays
• Perkbox access for a wide range of discounts
• Critical illness cover
• Life assurance and death in service cover
• Volunteer days
• Cycle-to-work scheme for the avid cyclists
• Salary sacrifice electric vehicles scheme
• Season ticket loans
• Financial and general wellbeing sessions
• Flexible benefits scheme with options of private health cover, private dental cover, additional company pension contributions, additional holidays (up to an extra 2 days), wellbeing contribution, charity contributions, tree planting

Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at Hippo:

At Hippo, we’re dedicated to creating a diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace that works for everyone. We understand that having a diverse team unlocks our capacity for innovation, creativity and problem solving. Only by building a community of diverse perspectives, cultures and socio-economic backgrounds can we create an environment where all can contribute and thrive. We actively encourage applications from underrepresented groups including women, ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+, neurodivergent and people with disabilities. We are committed to providing an inclusive and accessible recruitment process that reflects our workplace culture. We are a registered Disability Confident Employer, Mindful Employer, Endometriosis Friendly Employer and a member of the Armed Forces Covenant. Hippo continually strives to remove barriers, provide accommodations and offer reasonable adjustments to ensure equity throughout our practices.

Hippo locations:

We are headquartered in Leeds and have offices across the UK in Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham, London and Bristol. We're on the lookout for top talent nationwide but you need to be located within reasonable travelling distance from one of our offices which will be your contracted office location. Given the dynamic nature of a consulting business, you may be required to work on-site at a Hippo office or at an in/out of town client location for a number of days per week (client dependent) and therefore candidates will need to be open/flexible to travel. Plus, we offer a generous relocation support package of up to £8k (please ask for terms and conditions) to help make your move a smooth one.