Advisory Software Architect in London

As a global market leader, iPipeline combines technology, innovation, and expertise to deliver ground-breaking, award-winning software solutions that transform the life insurance, financial services, and protection industries. With one of the industry's largest data sets, we help advisors/advisers and agents to transform paper and manual operations into a secure, seamless digital experience – from proposal to commission – so they can help better secure the financial futures of their clients.

At iPipeline, you’ll play a major role in helping us to provide best-in-class, transformative solutions. We’re passionate, creative, and innovative, and together as a team, we continually strive to advance, accelerate, and expand the reach of our technology. We value different perspectives and are committed to creating an environment that embraces diverse backgrounds and fosters inclusion.

This is a Hybrid position.

Responsibilities

• The Advisory Software Architect is a senior strategic leader responsible for defining and driving the enterprise-wide architectural vision across software systems and applications. This role ensures that technology solutions align with business needs while maintaining the highest standards of security, performance, scalability, and quality.
• As a trusted advisor to senior leadership, the role influences long-term technology strategy, leads complex transformation initiatives (e.g., Micro Service Architecture and SaaS transformation, cloud adoption, AI integration, technical stack modernisation), and governs architectural consistency across the enterprise and partner ecosystems. The position also plays a key role in shaping industry best practices and representing the organisation externally.

Key Responsibilities

• Enterprise & Ecosystem Architecture
  • Design and oversee the implementation of enterprise-wide software architecture, spanning internal platforms, cloud environments, and external partner ecosystems.
  • Develop “big picture” architectural frameworks to guide engineering teams and ensure alignment with business strategy.
  • Ensure architectural consistency, scalability, performance, and maintainability across all systems.
• Strategic Technology Leadership
  • Influence executive-level decision-making by aligning architectural strategy with evolving business and market needs.
  • Evaluate and recommend emerging tools, technologies, and processes to enhance platform capability and innovation.
  • Define development standards, including technology choices, workflows, and coding practices.
• Transformation & Modernisation
  • Lead large-scale technology transformations such as cloud migration and hybrid architecture strategies, monolith-to-microservices evolution, and AI, analytics, and data platform integration.
  • Drive innovation in digital customer experiences within fintech and insurtech domains.
• Architecture Governance & Risk Management
  • Establish and lead enterprise architectural governance frameworks.
  • Ensure adherence to security, compliance, regulatory, and quality standards.
  • Identify and mitigate long-term architectural risks (e.g., vendor lock-in, scalability constraints, regulatory exposure).
• Technical Design & Solution Development
  • Conduct research, analyse data, gather requirements, and define end-to-end solutions.
  • Create architectural artefacts representing system functions, integrations, and user interfaces.
  • Provide expert technical guidance and oversight to development teams.
• Integration & Interoperability
  • Lead enterprise and ecosystem-wide integration strategies, including APIs, partner platforms, and third-party systems.
  • Ensure seamless interoperability across internal systems and external stakeholders.
• External Representation & Industry Influence
  • Represent the organisation at industry forums, regulatory groups, and technical consortiums.
  • Contribute to shaping broader industry architecture standards and best practices.
• Leadership & Mentorship
  • Coach and mentor architects and senior engineering leaders across the organisation.
  • Develop internal architectural frameworks, standards, and talent strategies.
  • Foster a strong engineering culture focused on excellence, collaboration, and continuous improvement.

Scope, Impact, and Influence (P5 Level)

• Scope: Enterprise-wide architecture, including partner ecosystems and regulatory alignment.
• Scale: Organisation-wide and often global technology influence.
• Impact: Drives innovation, reduces systemic risk, and ensures future-readiness of platforms.
• Influence: Shapes enterprise technology direction, engineering culture, and industry positioning.

Product & Platform Initiatives

• Microservice/SaaS Transformation: Lead the transition from monolith and on-premise solutions to scalable, resilient SaaS platforms, defining tenancy, deployment models, and operational patterns.
• Cloud Modernisation (AWS): Architect and govern migrations to AWS using native services (e.g., serverless, managed databases, API Gateway), ensuring security, performance, and cost efficiency.
• AI Enablement: Enable responsible adoption of AI and GenAI capabilities across the SDLC, including code generation, review, testing, documentation, and deployment automation. Take the technical ownership on implementing AI solutions for product enhancements.
• Cost of Ownership Optimisation: Drive architectural decisions that reduce TCO through right-sizing, service selection, automation, and platform standardisation.

Architecture & Governance Processes

• Central Change Governance: Contribute to and lead architecture forums to assess change impact, manage technical risk, and ensure alignment with enterprise strategy.
• Technical Design Authority (TDA): Act as a design authority for complex initiatives, reviewing and approving architectures, patterns, and non-functional requirements.
• Security & Compliance by Design: Embed global security best practices into architecture and delivery, ensuring compliance with regulatory and organisational standards.
• Pre-Sales Enablement: Provide architectural leadership for RFI/RFP responses and Proofs of Concept, shaping credible, scalable, and secure technical propositions.

Technical Competencies

• System & Application Architecture: Expert-level authority across distributed systems, APIs, security, and compliance.
• Cloud Architecture & Infrastructure: Mastery in defining enterprise cloud strategy, including vendor selection and governance.
• Integration & Interoperability: Deep expertise in ecosystem integrations and platform connectivity.
• Security & Compliance: Advanced knowledge of enterprise security frameworks and regulatory requirements.
• Development Tools & Methodologies: Leadership in engineering enablement, tooling strategy, and delivery practices.
• Domain Expertise: Strong experience in insurance and/or wealth management, with the ability to drive innovation within these sectors.

Qualifications

• Core Engineering: .NET Framework and C#, SQL, MVC, REST and SOAP APIs, with strong experience in designing maintainable, testable systems.
• AI-Assisted Engineering: Practical use of GenAI to accelerate development while maintaining quality, security, and governance standards.
• API & Integration: Headless API design, event-driven and service-oriented architectures, and secure integration across distributed systems.
• Cloud & DevOps: AWS-native architectures, CI/CD automation using GitHub Actions, infrastructure and deployment optimisation.
• Security Engineering: Security-by-design mindset with applied knowledge of OWASP Top 10, WCAG, OAuth2, MFA, and secure identity patterns.
• Quality & Assurance: Proficient in unit testing frameworks; governance and execution of SAST, DAST, SCA, and penetration testing processes.