Cloud‑Native Solutions Architect – AI & APIs

Facade Today; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

25 days annual leave

Private Healthcare Insurance

Dental and Healthcare Insurance

Life Assurance 4x salary

Pension contributions

Employee discounts

Job summary

Virgin Active is seeking a Senior Solution Architect to lead the architecture of its global digital ecosystem. This hands-on role collaborates with Product, Engineering, Data and IT teams to set technical direction, create secure, scalable solutions and drive a cloud-native, API-led, event-driven architecture across mobile, web, backend and data platforms.

You will guide complex features, deliver reference implementations, ensure security and production readiness, and partner with

Qualifications

• Significant software engineering experience in senior technical roles.
• Experience leading architecture across mobile, web, backend and data platforms.
• Strong knowledge of Microsoft Azure and cloud-native architecture.
• Experience designing API-led and event-driven solutions.
• Experience integrating third‑party platforms at scale.
• Understanding of security, identity, privacy and data architecture.
• Hands-on with C#, .NET, CI/CD and modern DevOps practices.
• Experience introducing AI/ML capabilities into digital products.

Responsibilities

• Own target architecture and technical roadmap for Virgin Active's digital ecosystem.
• Define standards for applications, APIs, integrations, data, security and cloud infra.
• Design secure, scalable solutions across mobile, web, backend, data and third-party systems.
• Lead complex features spanning multiple products and domains.
• Provide reference implementations and guide engineers to solve challenges.
• Drive transition to cloud-native, API-led, event-driven architecture.
• Collaborate with Product, Engineering, Data, Marketing and IT to align tech with business.
• Lead architecture reviews and communicate decisions, risks, and trade-offs clearly.
• Provide technical guidance to strengthen architectural capability across the team.
• Oversee Azure infrastructure, networking, identity and security.
• Establish standards for reliability, observability, testing, CI/CD and production readiness.
• Balance long-term goals with technical debt and cost.
• Provide oversight for third-party platforms and external partners.

Skills

Software engineering

Solution architecture

Azure

API-driven architecture

Event-driven architecture

C#/.NET

CI/CD

DevOps

Security & data architecture

Stakeholder management

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Azure Kubernetes Service

Service Bus

API Management

Event Grid

Logic Apps

Job description

Virgin Active is seeking a Senior Solution Architect to lead the architecture of its global digital ecosystem. This hands-on role collaborates with Product, Engineering, Data and IT teams to set technical direction, create secure, scalable solutions and drive a cloud-native, API-led, event-driven architecture across mobile, web, backend and data platforms.

You will guide complex features, deliver reference implementations, ensure security and production readiness, and partner with