Engineering Architect

Wessex Water Services; Bath; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Pension contribution up to 20%

25 days' holiday rising to 28 with len

Holiday buy/sell options

Healthcare package

Life assurance up to 8x salary

Electric car salary sacrifice (subject

Employee discounts

Volunteer day

Enhanced family leave

Wellbeing platform access

Job summary

Wessex Water Services is seeking an Engineering Architect to own and evolve the technical foundations across seven harness dimensions, ensuring secure, observable, and tested defaults in every delivery. You will enable a fast-moving AI-first team and maintain pipelines, governance, and hands-on delivery from architecture to deployment in the Azure estate.

You will lead design decisions, drive automated gates, and push forward observability and security, while staying credible in assurance and

Qualifications

• Full stack engineering capability with hands-on delivery in an Azure/ADO ecosystem using IaC.
• Proven coding in Python and JavaScript/TypeScript across back-end and front-end services.
• Strong knowledge of containerisation, virtualisation, and networking to design and operate Azure deployments.
• Proven ownership of CI/CD pipelines, IaC, release governance and DORA metrics.

Responsibilities

• Own and evolve technical foundations (security, performance, coding style, UI/UX baselines, logging/observability, testing).
• Build and maintain shared CI/CD pipelines and release governance; ensure automated standards and DORA metrics.
• Own light-touch governance with automated gates over committee review.
• Ensure observability is instrumented from first commit to live operation; enable handover to product teams.
• Contribute hands-on as a full-stack builder within each delivery time box; catch drift early.
• Design and run the delivery stack end-to-end (architecture, containers, networking, deployment) in Azure without external dependency.
• Shape deliveries as a lead; test technical feasibility and keep work within appetite.
• Represent team's technical position in assurance, security and enterprise architecture dialogues.
• Track industry trends and apply new techniques to harness, rules, skills library.

Skills

Azure

Azure DevOps

Full stack delivery

Python

JavaScript/TypeScript

CI/CD pipelines

Security

Observability

AI-first delivery

Agentic engineering

Retrieval/knowledge systems

Modern AI tech

Tools

Azure

Azure DevOps

Infrastructure as Code

Git

Containers

Virtualisation

Job description

As our new Engineering Architect, you will own and evolve the technical foundations that underpin product and service delivery, including engineering standards, development frameworks, CI/CD pipelines, testing harnesses, observability, and operational practices.

Your focus will be on enabling a fast-moving, AI-first delivery team to consistently deliver high-quality, scalable, and supportable solutions without needing to rebuild core foundations for every delivery cycle.

What you'll do

In this varied role, you will:

• own and version technical foundations across all seven harness dimensions (Security, performance, coding style, UI/UX baselines, logging and observability, testing) so that every deliverable inherits secure, observable and tested defaults
• build and maintain the shared ADO CI/CD pipelines and release governance so that standards are enforced automatically, and DORA metrics are produced from the pipeline itself
• own the light-touch technical governance model - automated gates over committee review
• ensure observability is instrumented from the first commit through to live running so that everything the team ships can be operated and handed over to a receiving product team
• contribute hands‑on as a full‑stack builder inside each delivery's time box so that the harness stays credible and drift is caught in days rather than at cycle end
• own the design and hands‑on running of the delivery stack end to end - application architecture, containerisation, virtualisation, networking and deployment topology - so that what the team builds can be stood up, scaled and supported in the Azure estate without external dependency
• shape deliveries as one of three leads, testing technical feasibility and setting the no‑gos, so that committed work stays inside its appetite
• represent the team's technical position in assurance, security and enterprise architecture conversations
• proactively track industry trends, emerging tools and agentic engineering practice, and self‑initiate the learning needed to apply them - trialling promising techniques and approaches in cooldown and sharing what works back into the harness, rules files and skills library.

What you'll need

We are looking for:

• deep, current full stack engineering capability with hands‑on delivery in an Azure and Azure DevOps (ADO) ecosystem using infrastructure as code approaches
• strong practical coding experience in Python and JavaScript/TypeScript, with the fluency to work across back‑end services, front‑end interfaces and automation scripting
• sound stack design judgement, with working knowledge of containerisation, virtualisation and networking sufficient to design, deploy and troubleshoot applications across Azure environments
• proven ownership of CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure‑as‑code, release governance and DORA‑based delivery measurement
• strong grounding in security (secret management, dependency and static analysis scanning, least‑privilege IAM), observability (structured logging, tracing and metrics) and test and evaluation automation
• practical experience of AI‑first, agentic delivery - rules files, known‑good templates, curated skills libraries and evaluation harnesses for AI‑generated output
• ability to codify standards as machine‑readable scaffolding rather than documentation, and to balance light‑touch governance against delivery speed
• credibility to represent the team's technical position with enterprise architecture, security and assurance functions
• experience designing and delivering production‑grade AI software systems across different domains
• proven expertise in designing and/or implementing generative AI systems in production, including agentic systems, RAG pipelines, tool‑use patterns, and model adaptation strategies
• practical experience in retrieval and knowledge systems
• breadth of knowledge across modern AI technologies, including generative models, deep learning, and predictive ML.

What you'll receive

• A combined pension contribution of up to 20%.
• Career progression and professional development opportunities.
• 25 days' holiday rising to 28 with length of service.
• The opportunity to sell up to five days of holiday every year.
• The opportunity to buy up to ten days of holiday each year (subject to conditions).
• A healthcare package that allows you to claim back healthcare costs.
• Life assurance of up to eight times your salary.
• The opportunity to lease a new electric car through salary sacrifice (subject to conditions).
• Cashback and discounts from more than 3,000 retailers.
• One paid volunteering day each year.
• Enhanced family leave and pay arrangements.
• Access to an interactive health and wellbeing platform.
• Support from trained mental health first aiders.
• A £1,000 referral fee if you recommend someone who is successfully recruited by us.

Who we are

• YTL UK is part of the international YTL Group based in Kuala Lumpur. The UK companies include:

• Wessex Water - one of the top-performing water and sewerage companies in England and Wales, serving 2.9 million people across the South West
• YTL Developments - a major UK developer currently redeveloping a 450-acre former airfield into an award‑winning, exciting mix of houses, apartments, schools, commercial space, restaurants and hotels, to make a truly sustainable new community
• YTL Construction UK - a top 20 UK contractor providing fully integrated services to infrastructure, residential, commercial, industry, energy and environmental sectors
• YTL Live - the development and operation of an entertainment complex that includes a 20,000 capacity arena, conferencing and exhibition space
• plus a number of other retail, environmental and specialist businesses.

Our people tell us that YTL UK is a great place to work, which is why so many of them stay with us! You will have a unique opportunity to develop and progress your career within such a diverse group.

We are passionate about diversity and inclusion - with that in mind, all applicants are welcome. We are delighted to have signed the Armed Forces Covenant and are a Disability Confident Employer.

If you require reasonable adjustments to be made during the recruitment process, please inform a member of our Recruitment team.