Principal Technical Architect, Internal Products

Aboutus Ft; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Generous annual leave

Medical cover

Parental leave packages

Hybrid working model

Gym membership discounts

Job summary

Financial Times is seeking a Principal Technical Architect for Internal Products to provide architectural leadership across our portfolio of enterprise platforms and internally developed applications.

You will define architectural principles, standards and reusable patterns to simplify our technology landscape while guiding major transformation initiatives and maintaining alignment with FT's strategic direction.

Qualifications

• Demonstrable experience in a senior technical, solution or enterprise architecture role within a complex technology organisation.
• Experience defining architectural direction across multiple applications, platforms and business domains.
• Strong knowledge of modern application architecture, enterprise SaaS platforms, cloud-native technologies and distributed systems.
• Strong understanding of enterprise integration, APIs, event-driven architecture and common integration patterns.
• Experience establishing architectural principles, standards and governance while enabling teams to retain appropriate autonomy.
• Experience translating complex business requirements and strategic objectives into pragmatic technology architectures and roadmaps.

Responsibilities

• Acting as the technical authority on architecture across Internal Products, providing direction across enterprise platforms, applications and strategic programmes.
• Defining and evolving architectural principles, technology standards, reference architectures and reusable patterns.
• Establishing a clear architectural direction for Internal Products that aligns with the Technology Director's strategy and the wider FT technology strategy.
• Developing target architectures and technology roadmaps that help teams evolve their platforms towards a simpler and more sustainable technology landscape.
• Identifying opportunities to consolidate capabilities, promote reuse and reduce unnecessary technology complexity and technical debt.
• Ensuring architectural decisions appropriately consider scalability, resilience, security, operability, maintainability and cost.
• Identifying emerging architectural risks and working with teams to develop pragmatic approaches to addressing them.
• Providing architectural leadership for major transformation initiatives, including the Commercial Technology Programme.
• Working with product, engineering and business teams to translate strategic objectives and complex business requirements into technology architectures.
• Supporting significant technology and platform decisions, ensuring solutions align with longer-term architectural direction.
• Providing architectural oversight across programmes involving multiple platforms, teams, integrations and technology partners.
• Helping teams understand architectural trade-offs and make pragmatic decisions that balance immediate delivery needs with longer-term sustainability.
• Evaluating technology platforms and strategic suppliers, providing architectural input into technology selection and investment decisions.
• Establishing and promoting consistent integration patterns across enterprise SaaS platforms, cloud-native services and internally developed applications.
• Defining principles and standards for APIs, events and system interoperability.
• Ensuring integration decisions promote appropriate reuse, loose coupling and clear ownership between systems and domains.
• Working with teams to identify opportunities to simplify integrations and reduce duplication across the technology estate.
• Collaborating with platform, security and engineering teams to ensure solutions meet wider FT technology standards.
• Managing and supporting two senior technical leaders, providing coaching, feedback and career development.
• Setting clear expectations and creating the autonomy for senior technical leaders to lead effectively within their areas.
• Ensuring strong alignment between architectural direction and technical leadership across Internal Products.
• Supporting the development of architecture and engineering leadership capability across the organisation.
• Mentoring senior engineers and others taking architectural responsibility within their teams.
• Creating an environment that encourages constructive technical challenge, collaboration, knowledge sharing and continuous learning.
• Helping build a strong architecture community and culture across Internal Products.
• Establishing pragmatic architecture governance that provides appropriate oversight while enabling engineering teams to retain autonomy.
• Leading architecture reviews for significant technology decisions and solutions.
• Partnering closely with Principal Engineers and Engineering Leads to ensure architectural direction can be effectively translated into engineering delivery.
• Building effective relationships with Product Managers, business stakeholders and technology leaders to ensure architecture is informed by both technology and business priorities.
• Collaborating with architects and engineering colleagues across the wider FT to promote consistency, shared standards and reuse.
• Clearly communicating architectural decisions, trade-offs, risks and recommendations to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Representing Internal Products in relevant architecture and technology forums across the FT.

Skills

Technical architecture

Leadership

Cloud-native technologies

APIs & integration

Stakeholder management

Architectural governance

Communication

Vendor evaluation

Tools

AWS

Salesforce

Job description

Financial Times is seeking a Principal Technical Architect for Internal Products to provide architectural leadership across our portfolio of enterprise platforms and internally developed applications.

You will define architectural principles, standards and reusable patterns to simplify our technology landscape while guiding major transformation initiatives and maintaining alignment with FT's strategic direction.