Global Principal Architect — AI-Driven Platform & Governance

Harvey Nash; United Kingdom; On-site; GBP 120,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Harvey Nash, a global SaaS company in education technology, is seeking a Principal Architect to shape long-term technology direction across a multi-region environment. This senior IC role sits at the centre of a global technology function, reporting into the Global VP of Technology and Operations.

You will drive architecture governance, standards, and decision-making processes, aligning platform roadmaps with product strategy while enabling engineering teams across the UK and US to move faster

Qualifications

• Proven experience in senior architecture or technical leadership roles within SaaS or product-led environments.
• Strong background in software engineering and cloud-native design.
• Ability to define roadmaps and align technology with business outcomes.
• Excellent communication and collaboration across international teams.

Responsibilities

• Define and evolve architecture principles, standards and governance across the organisation.
• Establish and lead architecture forums and decision-making processes.
• Drive consistency in tooling, design patterns and integration approaches.
• Ensure strong governance across security, scalability, resilience and observability.
• Provide oversight of key architectural decisions, risks and trade-offs.
• Promote pragmatic governance that supports delivery rather than slowing it down.
• Own and maintain the technical roadmap aligned to product and business strategy.
• Identify opportunities around AI adoption, platform scaling and modernisation.
• Highlight and prioritise technical debt and platform risks.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and guide adoption decisions.
• Balance regional requirements with global platform direction.

Skills

Senior Architect

Cloud-native

Distributed systems

APIs

Job description

Harvey Nash, a global SaaS company in education technology, is seeking a Principal Architect to shape long-term technology direction across a multi-region environment. This senior IC role sits at the centre of a global technology function, reporting into the Global VP of Technology and Operations.

You will drive architecture governance, standards, and decision-making processes, aligning platform roadmaps with product strategy while enabling engineering teams across the UK and US to move faster