Technical Architect - BigCommerce in London

At VML, we are a beacon of innovation and growth in an ever‐evolving world. Our heritage is built upon a century of combined expertise, where creativity meets technology, and diverse perspectives ignite inspiration. With the merger of VMLY&R and Wunderman Thompson, we have forged a new path as a growth partner that is part creative agency, part consultancy, and part technology powerhouse.

Our global family now encompasses over 30,000 employees across 150+ offices in 64 markets, each contributing to a culture that values connection, belonging, and the power of differences. Our expertise spans the entire customer journey, offering deep insights in communications, commerce, consultancy, CRM, CX, data, production, and technology. We deliver end‐to‐end solutions that result in revolutionary work.

The opportunity: We are looking for a BigCommerce Technical Architect to be based in our London or Watford office with Hybrid working. The successful candidate will be seen as the technical leader within a high‐performing team, and will work closely with the overall solution architect and lead developers to design, deliver, govern, and ensure quality of new solutions built on or integrated into the BigCommerce platform.

The candidate will be required to work closely with our clients and our delivery teams to ensure our solutions meet the business requirements and are delivered to our principles, standards, and best practices. The candidate should be business focused and have a proven track record of successful technical design and delivery using BigCommerce as the cornerstone of the solution.

What you'll be doing:

• Producing and owning innovative and well‐engineered technical solutions to fit business requirements, following our delivery methodology, and ensuring successful delivery of the solution.
• Producing and owning architecture design documents as required, covering baseline and target architectures for applications, integrations, data and occasionally technology - ensuring the design meets our architecture principles and best practices for the technology platform and justifying the design against other options.
• Producing technical specifications and guidance for developers covering mid‐low‐level application, interface, and data model design, including identifying relevant design patterns and application frameworks.
• Communicating technical architectures and designs to internal teams, including developers and testers, and being the technical leader of that product team.
• Communicating directly with the customer on all aspects of the technical design, including running design workshops, participating in architecture reviews, providing recommendations and reasons for key design decisions, and explaining complex technical designs to non‐technical stakeholders.
• Communicating directly with 3rd parties to agree specifications and designs.
• Identifying impacts of a given solution/architecture and challenging business requirements or suggesting alternate solutions where necessary.
• Identifying and managing key stakeholders of the overall architecture, particularly where change is required.
• Championing, upholding, and communicating the principals of good engineering practice around software design, automation testing, DevOps principals within agile teams and with the client.
• Working collaboratively with other architects and lead developers to share knowledge and solutions.
• Estimating the design and implementation effort of large‐scale and complex technical solutions and assisting in the delivery, migration, and go‐live planning with the ability to highlight key risks and dependencies.
• Ownership of the technical delivery, ensuring and demonstrating the quality of the deliverable, from code quality through to performance, scalability, observability, and security of the solution.

What we want from you:

• Significant BigCommerce technical design, technical architecture, and development experience.
• Experience developing and delivering within the BigCommerce App ecosystem.
• Understand the potential constraints of BigCommerce for a given solution, and how to mitigate them.
• Experience in designing and building multi‐currency, multi‐language, multi‐site solutions.
• A thorough understanding of traditional and modern web technologies, including client‐server architecture, distributed systems, event‐driven systems, API design and front‐end technologies such as Single Page Applications.
• Experience with the development lifecycle of a BigCommerce solution.
• Experience of API design and implementation and working with APIs for integration to 3rd party systems.
• Experience of integrating between BigCommerce and ERP / WMS / OMS / CRM systems outside the BigCommerce domain.
• Experience working alongside 3rd party architects.

What we can offer you: Alongside the opportunity to work with some of the most exciting brands around the world, we'll also prioritise your career development and help you grow your skills. We'll empower you to make a difference, allow you to be yourself, and respect who you are.

Our personality and behaviours: We believe that we are what we do, not just what we say. Our shared values and behaviours show how to bring the VML Enterprise Solution's culture to life through the actions we all take every day: Connect Meaningfully Include Purposefully.

Our brilliant, talented people are what makes VML Enterprise Solutions what we are. That's why we look for people who go beyond and always push our thinking to be better than yesterday.

AT VML Enterprise Solutions Our Enterprise Solutions division houses strategic consultants, creative and technical architects and skilled developers and operators that together help some of the world's leading organisations to deliver outstanding digital experiences across all major routes to market worldwide: marketplaces, online retailers, D2C, B2B and social platforms. With over 4,200 experts in 55 operational centres across 34 countries, our capabilities span the entire buying journey from customer acquisition, through engagement, to conversion and loyalty, driving multi‐channel growth for world‐leading brands.

We work with some of the most exciting brands such as The Coca‐Cola Company, EY, Bosch, Unilever, Ford, DFS, Mercedes‐Benz, Johnson & Johnson, Nestlé, Sainsbury's, Selfridges, Shell and Tiffany & Co. We've built over 500 platforms for brands and retailers and generate in excess of $29bn annually for our clients and work with over 50 strategic partners including Adobe, SAP, Salesforce, HCL, Shopify, Sitecore, BigCommerce, commerce tools and Acquia. Our reputation is based on our people, and we believe we have some of the best in the business.

As our business grows internationally, we're looking for new people to join us on our journey to inspire and take a key role in shaping some of the best commerce solutions, services, and websites in the world. Working as a team, no problem is insurmountable; we share in our client's successes and believe that anyone can show creative bravery no matter what their role is in the team.

WPP (VML Enterprise Solutions) is an equal opportunity employer and considers applicants for all positions without discrimination or regard to characteristics. We are committed to fostering a culture of respect in which everyone feels they belong and has the same opportunities to progress in their careers.