Senior Cloud Architect API-led AI-ready Platforms

Virgin Active Limited; Greater London; On-site; GBP 110,000 - 140,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

25 days annual leave

The Peoples Pension

Complimentary Virgin Active membership

Private Dental and Healthcare

Life Assurance 4x salary

Discounts across Virgin Active

Virgin Family discounts

20% off food and drink at KAUAI

Job summary

Virgin Active is seeking a Senior Solution Architect to lead the architecture of its global digital ecosystem. You will own the architectural roadmap, set standards for security, APIs, data and cloud infra, and design scalable solutions across mobile, web and backend platforms.

You will guide a cloud-native, API-led and event-driven transition, partnering with Product, Engineering, Data and IT teams to align technical decisions with business goals and ensure production readiness.

Qualifications

• Significant software engineering experience, including experience as a Solution Architect, Principal Engineer or in a similar senior technical role.
• Experience leading architecture across mobile, web, backend, integration and data platforms.
• Strong knowledge of Microsoft Azure, cloud-native architecture, distributed systems and microservices.
• Experience designing API-led and event-driven solutions.
• Experience integrating third-party platforms and services at scale.
• A good understanding of security, identity, privacy and data architecture.
• Hands-on experience with C#, .NET, CI/CD and modern DevOps practices.
• Experience introducing AI or machine-learning capabilities into digital products.
• Strong technical judgement and the ability to balance scalability, maintainability, cost and delivery.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder-management skills, with the ability to lead through influence.

Responsibilities

• Own the target architecture and technical roadmap across Virgin Active’s digital ecosystem.
• Define architectural standards for applications, APIs, integrations, data, security and cloud infrastructure.
• Design secure, scalable solutions across mobile, web, backend services, data platforms and third-party systems.
• Lead the design of complex features spanning multiple products and technical domains.
• Create reference implementations and work directly with engineers to solve complex technical challenges.
• Guide our transition towards a cloud-native, API-led and event-driven architecture.
• Work with our Group Chief of AI to support the safe and effective introduction of AI into member experiences.
• Partner with Product, Engineering, Data, Marketing and IT teams to align technical solutions with business priorities.
• Lead architecture reviews and communicate technical decisions, risks and trade-offs clearly.
• Provide technical guidance to engineers and help strengthen architectural capability across the team.
• Oversee Microsoft Azure architecture, including networking, identity, security and infrastructure.
• Establish standards for reliability, observability, testing, CI/CD and production readiness.
• Balance long-term architectural goals with technical debt, cost and delivery priorities.
• Provide technical oversight for third-party platforms, vendors and external delivery partners.

Skills

Solution Architect

Architecture leadership

Azure cloud

API-led design

Event-driven

Security & data

C#/.NET

CI/CD

AI integration

Stakeholder mgmt

Tools

Azure Kubernetes Service

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

Virgin Active is seeking a Senior Solution Architect to lead the architecture of its global digital ecosystem. You will own the architectural roadmap, set standards for security, APIs, data and cloud infra, and design scalable solutions across mobile, web and backend platforms.

You will guide a cloud-native, API-led and event-driven transition, partnering with Product, Engineering, Data and IT teams to align technical decisions with business goals and ensure production readiness.