Application Architect, Medical Imaging

We’re on a mission to change the future of clinical research. At Perceptive, we help the biopharmaceutical industry bring medical treatments to the market, faster. Our mission is to change the world but to do this, we need people like you.

What can we offer you? Apart from job satisfaction, we can offer you:

• 25 days’ holiday (with the option to buy more)
• Health Cash Plan
• Optional private health, dental insurance, and health screens
• Cycle to work scheme
• Generous pension scheme with up to 10% employer contribution
• Life assurance
• Season ticket loan

About the role: As Application Architect, Medical Imaging, your primary goal will be to conceptualize and guide the creation of advanced, cloud-native platforms which harness artificial intelligence to revolutionize medical imaging within clinical research. Working remotely in the UK, in this newly created role you'll deploy your combination of architectural experience and deep medical imaging domain knowledge to ensure that solutions are designed to meet the evolving needs of clinical trials, balancing innovation, scalability, security and regulatory compliance. Critically, you'll act as a bridge between the architectural vision and the hands-on engineering work that brings these solutions to life.

Key Responsibilities

• Technical Requirements Definition and Management
  • Collaborate closely with Product Managers and Product Owners to refine and clarify business features and requirements, ensuring alignment with organizational goals and end-user needs.
  • Translate high-level business requirements into clear, actionable technical specifications and architectural enablers, maintaining traceability throughout the development lifecycle.
  • Advocate for standards-driven solutions by integrating best practices and architectural principles into requirements definition, reducing technical debt and ensuring scalability.
  • Document and communicate requirements in a structured manner to guide development efforts, validate solution fit, and support ongoing change management.
  • Create Architectural Enablers as required to ensure business requirements are fully and all dependencies are defined and considered.
• Cloud-Native SaaS Architecture Design
  • Design, document, and communicate scalable, multi-tenant SaaS architectures using cloud-native services, selecting technology components and design patterns.
  • Architect and document microservices-based systems optimized for medical imaging data processing and AI workloads.
  • Analyse requirements and produce specifications to ensure solutions will have appropriate auto-scaling, load balancing, and distributed computing strategies for handling large medical imaging datasets.
  • Design and document secure API-first services for seamless integration with clinical trial systems.
  • Ensure platform scalability to support multiple concurrent clinical trials and imaging workflows.
  • Document design decisions and low-level designs following the C4 model.
• AI-Driven Medical Imaging Platform Development
  • Define the integration approach of AI/ML models for medical image analysis, including genAI, agentic ai, computer vision and deep learning algorithms.
  • Create low-level designs which enable the real-time and batch processing of medical imaging data (DICOM, NIfTI, etc.).
  • Scope and design efficient DICOM image pre-processing workflows.
• Medical Image Viewer Integration & Workflow Design
  • Architect integration layers for third-party medical imaging viewers (OHIF, Cornerstone.js, or proprietary systems).
  • Design and agree APIs and SDKs for seamless integration with existing clinical trial management systems.
  • Ensure designs are cross-platform compatible and will provide a responsive design for various devices and browsers.
• Regulatory Compliance & Security Architecture
  • Design systems compliant with FDA 21 CFR Part 11, GxP, HIPAA, and international medical device regulations.
  • Create strategies and designs which will lead to the implementation of comprehensive audit trails, electronic signatures, and data integrity controls.
  • Architect security frameworks including encryption at rest and in transit, role-based access control, and secure authentication.
  • Design disaster recovery and business continuity solutions for critical clinical trial data.
  • Ensure compliance with medical data privacy regulations across multiple jurisdictions.
• Database & Data Architecture for Medical Imaging
  • Design high-performance database architectures optimized for medical imaging metadata and AI model outputs.
  • Perform analysis of business features to create and maintain both logical and physical data models.
  • Design solutions which enable the storage, analysis, access, and movement of large-scale medical imaging datasets.
  • Design efficient data partitioning and indexing strategies for multi-dimensional medical data.
  • Architect real-time data streaming solutions for live imaging analysis.
  • Implement data governance frameworks ensuring data quality and lineage tracking.
• Performance Optimization & Monitoring
  • Design comprehensive monitoring and observability strategies for SaaS platform performance.
  • Optimize system performance for large medical imaging secure file processing and transfer.
  • Establish SLAs and implement automated alerting systems for platform reliability.
• Technical Leadership
  • Engage in technical decisions on technology stack selection for medical imaging and AI workloads, in collaboration with Solution Architect.
  • Mentor team members to foster their professional, technical, and domain growth and development.
  • Ensure development is in line with design via code reviews, inspection and discussion.
  • Join technical architecture reviews and provide guidance on complex system design decisions.
  • Lead by example, demonstrating strong technical leadership skills and fostering a collaborative and innovative team environment.
• Innovation
  • Drive adoption of emerging technologies in medical imaging, AI/ML, and cloud computing.
  • Monitor the market to gather intelligence on emerging technologies.
  • Share knowledge and insights with others.
• Other
  • Work collaboratively with relevant stakeholders.
  • Mentor engineering teams on best practice in cloud architecture and security and medical imaging standards.
  • Continuously evaluating new technologies and recommending improvements to enhance the platform’s architecture and capabilities.

Functional Competencies (Technical Knowledge/Skills)

• Knowledge of containerization and serverless architectures.
• Deep understanding of DICOM standard implementation, including DICOM conformance statements and IHE integration profiles.
• Advanced-level knowledge of DICOM networking protocols (DICOM C-STORE, C-FIND, C-MOVE) and DICOMweb services.
• Knowledge and experience with enabling AI/ML solutions within imaging platforms, as well as MLOps practices.
• Advanced knowledge of security frameworks, encryption, and identity management solutions.
• Understanding of medical imaging modalities (CT, MRI, X-Ray, PET, Ultrasound) and imaging clinical workflows.
• Knowledge of clinical trial processes, regulatory requirements, and quality management systems.
• Excellent technical leadership and mentoring capabilities.
• Strong stakeholder management skills with ability to communicate complex technical concepts to product and business teams.
• Proven ability to balance technical excellence with business objectives and regulatory requirements.
• Understanding of medical imaging modalities (CT, MRI, X-Ray, PET, Ultrasound) and their specific DICOM implementations.
• Knowledge of message queuing systems for high-throughput medical data processing.
• Ability to architect scalable and fault-tolerant distributed systems for high-throughput medical data management.

Experience, Education and Certifications

• Deep expertise in cloud platforms with a strong understanding of serverless and scalable architectures, modern cloud-native services, and integration with AI/ML services.
• Proficiency in designing and implementing APIs (e.g. RESTful, GraphQL) and real-time communication protocols.
• Experience with medical imaging standards (DICOM, HL7 FHIR) and specialized DICOM processing libraries (pydicom, DCMTK, GDCM).
• Extensive experience with DICOM standard implementation, including DICOM parsing libraries, tag manipulation, and compliance validation.
• Expertise in database design for both relational and NoSQL systems.
• Comprehensive experience in DevOps methodologies, including CI/CD pipeline automation and infrastructure as code.
• Strong background in software testing, validation, and quality assurance for regulated medical systems.
• Experience with medical image viewer technologies and PACS integration.
• Familiarity with AI applications in medical imaging (computer-aided diagnosis, image segmentation, etc.).
• Experience leading cross-functional teams in regulated environments.
• Deep and wide-ranging post-qualification architecture development expertise, with leadership in complex projects involving medical imaging or healthcare technology.
• Proven experience designing and developing cloud-native SaaS platforms at enterprise scale.
• Demonstrated experience with AI/ML integration in production environments, preferably in medical imaging.
• Experience with regulated software development (FDA, GxP, ISO 13485) and validation processes.
• Strong background in medical imaging file formats, processing libraries, and viewer integrations.
• Experience with clinical trial management systems and electronic data capture (EDC) platforms.
• Experience with DICOM image processing workflows, anonymization techniques, and metadata preservation.
• Experience with medical image viewer technologies, PACS integration, and DICOM routing workflows.
• Familiarity with AI applications in medical imaging (computer-aided diagnosis, image segmentation, etc.) using DICOM datasets.
• Advanced proficiency in Java, Python, or C# for backend development.
• Experience with modern frontend frameworks (React, Angular) for medical imaging applications.
• Hands-on experience with cloud services: compute, storage, databases, AI/ML services, and monitoring tools.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code, and DevOps practices.
• Experience with monitoring and observability tools.
• Proficiency in developing and deploying microservices architectures in cloud-based environments.
• Bachelor's Degree (Master's or PhD’s preferred) in Computer Science, Biomedical Engineering, Software Engineering, or related technical discipline.
• Additional certifications in cloud platforms (or be prepared to gain qualifications).
• Medical device software development training or certification preferred.
• English: Fluent.

Come as you are. We're proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, colour, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.