Infrastructure Architecture – Lead Architect

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 10 million students worldwide. We work with over 28,000 schools, nurseries, and education trusts in 115 countries to deliver customer-centric solutions that improve education outcomes. 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 and other professional institutions to enrich the lives of learners.

RM Group operates through three businesses: Technology (Managed Services, Software and Infrastructure for Schools), Assessment (Software and Services) and TTS (Educational Resources). Within the assessment market we are experts in providing solutions for online 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, A-Levels, and professional qualifications. Each year, our software is used globally to conduct hundreds of thousands of on-screen tests and to mark millions of paper-based scripts. For over a decade we have been partnering with the world’s leading awarding bodies to deliver intuitive, secure, and reliable e-marking solutions.

As lead architect, you will manage the Infrastructure Architecture team, providing guidance, mentorship and day to day management of the team’s workload and priorities. You will be responsible for the quality of our infrastructure design. Ensuring the highest standards, consistent patterns, and a best of breed approach to infrastructure design will be second nature to you. You will be a key collaborator with our Product Architects, challenging their decisions and working closely to optimize technical designs. Your insights and expertise will be instrumental in translating conceptual designs into tangible technical deliverables that deliver infrastructure designs to meet business requirements with high availability and controlled costs.

Key Responsibilities

• Line management and mentorship of the Infrastructure Architecture team.
• Deliver reference architectures and reusable patterns for Azure infrastructure.
• Design secure, performant and supportable architectures for delivery by RM’s Infrastructure Engineering team.
• Ensure designs include observability, resilience, and security by design.
• Ensure designs are scalable, available, control costs, and provide cost reporting capabilities.
• Work with technical architects, development leads and project teams to ensure changes to infrastructure and processes align with best practice and with a customer-led focus.

Experience

• Prior experience in a technical leadership role or similar capacity.
• Deep knowledge of the Microsoft Azure ecosystem.
• Solid understanding of Security, IAM, Networking, and Database concepts.
• Experience in designing, understanding, and troubleshooting complex distributed systems.
• Experience producing HLDs/LLDs, architecture diagrams, and other documentation.
• Familiarity with standard project lifecycle processes.
• Time management skills: ability to understand business impact and prioritise tasks accordingly.
• Outstanding interpersonal skills, a highly personable, engaging approach and a strong alignment to RM's core values: Customer success, high standards, respect for others, innovation, openness and enjoyment at work.
• Excellent collaboration skills.
• Good working knowledge of the following products: Gitlab CI/CD, Azure DevOps, Docker, Terraform, Bash, Packer, Ansible.

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, some roles are also eligible for a performance-related bonus. 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.