Lead Architect: Distributed Systems & Platform Strategy

BBC Studios; Greater London; On-site; GBP 85,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

BBC Studios in London seeks a Lead Architect to shape the technical direction for a high-traffic news/content website and mobile app ecosystem. You will enable teams to make sound architectural decisions while aligning local choices with broader system goals.

The role balances autonomy with architectural consistency, introducing lightweight governance through patterns and reusable blueprints, and driving long-term sustainability.

Qualifications

• Experience designing distributed systems and shaping architecture.
• Strong grasp of trade-offs like coupling, cohesion and scalability.
• Familiarity with evolutionary architecture practices and fitness functions.
• Experience with modern engineering practices (CI/CD, observability, cloud-native).
• Ability to influence across multiple teams without formal authority.
• Strong facilitation skills to guide discussions and surface trade-offs.
• Comfort working in ambiguity and complexity.
• Ability to challenge constructively and align stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Facilitate architectural thinking within teams rather than owning decisions centrally.
• Support engineers and tech leads in evaluating trade-offs like scalability and operability.
• Encourage lightweight artefacts (ADRs, design narratives) for decisions.
• Push ownership to teams; ensure decisions are made at the right level.
• Set architectural direction through principles and reusable defaults.
• Evolve paved roads and golden paths to simplify good decisions.
• Avoid heavyweight governance; provide guidance and enablement.
• Collaborate with Product, Engineering and Delivery to align goals and tech direction.
• Shape build vs buy, platform vs product, and long-term investments.
• Coach engineers and tech leads in architectural thinking.

Skills

Distributed systems

Architectural trade-offs

Evolutionary architecture

CI/CD & observability

Influence without authority

Facilitation

Ambiguity handling

Constructive challenge

Job description

BBC Studios in London seeks a Lead Architect to shape the technical direction for a high-traffic news/content website and mobile app ecosystem. You will enable teams to make sound architectural decisions while aligning local choices with broader system goals.

The role balances autonomy with architectural consistency, introducing lightweight governance through patterns and reusable blueprints, and driving long-term sustainability.