Head of Architecture in Abingdon

Overview

Would you like to help enrich the lives of learners around the world?

At RM, we’ve been pioneers of education technology since 1973.

We provide technology and resources to the education sector, supporting over 20 million students and improving educational outcomes worldwide.

What we do helps learners at all stages of their lives, from preschool to higher education and professional qualification; we partner with schools, examination boards, governments, and professional organisations globally to make learning more accessible, more engaging, and more impactful.

RM operates through three divisions: Assessment (digital assessment and marking solutions), Technology (managed services, hardware, and software for schools), and TTS (educational resources).

Within theassessment marketwe are experts inproviding solutions foronline exam testing and marking and the management and analysis of educational data.

We work with government ministries, exam boards and professional awarding bodies for high stakes assessment such as GCSEs, ALevels, and professional qualifications.

Each year, our software is used globally toconducthundreds of thousands of on-screen tests and to mark millions ofpaper-basedscripts.

For over a decadewe havebeen partnering with the world’s leading awarding bodies to deliver intuitive, secure, and reliable e-marking solutions.

Visit our website to find out more: www. rm. com/assessment

The Head of Architecture is responsible for defining and executing the technology architecture strategy across a hybrid engineering organisation delivering two existing platforms that are beingconsolidatedinto a unified future-state platform.

This role provides technical leadership, architectural governance, and strategic direction to ensure businessobjectives, scalability, security, reliability, and delivery outcomes are achieved throughout the platform convergence journey.

The successful candidate will work closely with Product, Engineering, Delivery, Security, Operations, and senior business stakeholders to establish a clear target architecture, manage technical risk, and lead architectural decision-making across distributed teams.

We encourage early applications as the vacancy may close once the position has been filled or final interviews have been arranged.

Responsibilities

Key Responsibilities

• Architecture Strategy & Leadership
• Define and own the enterprise and solution architecture strategy supporting the consolidation of two platforms into a single target architecture.
• Develop and maintain architectural roadmaps aligned to business and product objectives.
• Establish architectural principles, standards, patterns, and governance processes.
• Drive technology decisions that balance business value, delivery speed, operational resilience, and long-term maintainability.
• Act as the senior architectural authority across the organisation.
• Platform Convergence & Transformation
• Lead the architectural assessment of both existing platforms, identifyingoverlaps, dependencies, risks, and opportunities for consolidation.
• Define transition architectures and migration strategies that minimise business disruption.
• Create and maintain target-state architecture models covering applications, integrations, data, infrastructure, and security.
• Support prioritisation of technical debt reduction and platform modernisation initiatives.
• Ensure platform convergence delivers measurable improvements in customer experience, operational efficiency, and cost effectiveness.
• Engineering Collaboration
• Partner with Engineering Managers, Principal Engineers, Technical Leads, Product teams, Operational and Growth teams to ensure architecture supports delivery objectives.
• Provide guidance and mentoring to architects and senior engineers across the organisation.
• Facilitate architectural reviews and design authority forums.
• Encourage adoption of modern engineering practices, automation, cloud-native architectures, and platform engineering principles.
• Governance & Risk Management
• Establish architecture governance processes that enable delivery whilemaintainingtechnical integrity.
• Ensure solutions comply with security, regulatory, data protection, and operational requirements.
• Identifyarchitectural risks and develop mitigation plans.
• Oversee technical due diligence for significant technology investments and vendor engagements.
• Stakeholder Engagement
• Communicate architecture strategy and decisions to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Build strong relationships with executive stakeholders and business leaders.
• Support business case development for strategic technology initiatives.
• Provide regular updates on architecture roadmap progress, risks, and outcomes.
• Leadership Responsibilities
• Lead and develop a hybrid architecture functionoperatingacross multiple locations and disciplines.
• Foster collaboration between teams supporting the existing platforms and those building the future-state platform.
• Create a culture of continuous improvement, knowledge sharing, and technical excellence.
• Support recruitment, succession planning, and capability development within the architecture community.
• Act as a visible technical leader across the organisation.

Experience

Essential

• Significant experiencein senior architecture leadership roles.
• Proven experience leading architecture within complex digital, Saa S, platform, or enterprise technology environments.
• Demonstrable success delivering large-scale platform transformation or platform consolidation programmes.
• Strong knowledge of cloud architectures (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
• Experience with distributed systems, APIs, integration patterns, data architecture, and modern software delivery practices.
• Strong stakeholder management and influencing skills at executive level.
• Experienceoperatingwithin agile and product-led delivery environments.
• Excellent communication, facilitation, and decision-making skills.

Desirable

• Experience managing architecture teams within hybrid or distributed organisations.
• Experience with platform modernisation, cloud migration, and legacy transformation.
• Knowledge of security architecture, Dev Sec Ops, and regulatory compliance frameworks.
• Experience supporting mergers, acquisitions, or platform integration programmes.
• Relevant architecture certifications (TOGAF, AWS, Azure, or equivalent).

What’s in it for you?

At RM we have My Work Blend @RM which provides office-based colleagues with multi location and hybrid working options.

As well as your office base, you can spend a proportion of your time working at other locations that suit your role and your life, including home, other offices, customer sites, distribution centres or on the move.

We encourage you to discuss arrangements for this role with your potential line manager during the recruitment process.

As well as a competitive salary and our core benefits package which includes private medical healthcare, life assurance and a Group Personal Pension Plan with higher contribution levels available.

There are lots of voluntary benefits too.

You could buy additional annual leave, join our dental plan, sign up for a health assessment, or take part in our cycle to work scheme.

You could even earn yourself an extra bonus for successfully recommending a friend or family member for a position within RM.

To better reflect the society that we serve, we’re committed to building a diverse workforce and creating an inclusive and welcoming environment for all.

To achieve this, we create teams of talented people from different backgrounds and experiences and strive to be a business where our people can bring their whole selves to work, we also want to make the recruitment process as inclusive as possible for everyone.

Should you require additional support with your application or through the interview process, please contact us at recruitment@rm. com.

Unfortunately, we are unable to offer visa sponsorship for this role.

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