Senior Cloud Architect & Enterprise Platform Leader

Next Ventures; United Kingdom; On-site; GBP 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Next Ventures seeks a Senior Cloud Architect to define and govern the enterprise cloud architecture strategy across AWS, Azure and hybrid environments. As the senior technical authority, you will lead cloud transformation, set engineering standards, ensure platform security and resilience, and align cloud capabilities with business strategy.

You will manage Cloud Architects and Engineering Lane Leads while partnering with Enterprise Architecture, Security, Operations and Product.

Qualifications

• 12+ years enterprise IT experience.
• 8+ years designing enterprise cloud platforms.
• Proven leadership in cloud transformation.
• Experience managing senior technical teams.
• Strong architecture governance background.

Responsibilities

• Own the enterprise cloud architecture roadmap.
• Define cloud adoption and modernization strategies.
• Assess emerging cloud technologies and trends.
• Drive platform and engineering standardisation.
• Lead technology lifecycle management and technical debt reduction.
• Lead or participate in Architecture Review Boards and Design Authority.
• Approve solution architectures for major programmes.
• Establish reference architectures and reusable patterns.
• Ensure compliance with enterprise architecture principles.
• Govern architecture quality across delivery.
• Act as the highest technical authority for cloud architecture.
• Provide leadership across AWS, Azure and hybrid cloud.
• Challenge designs for scalability, resilience, security and cost.
• Guide engineering teams through complex decisions.
• Mentor senior architects and engineering leads.
• Define engineering standards and best practices.
• Promote IaC (Terraform, GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps).
• Drive automation and CI/CD maturity.
• Improve observability, monitoring and operational excellence.
• Champion SRE and platform reliability.
• Translate business strategy into cloud capability.
• Support investment decisions and value realisation.
• Influence enterprise technology direction.
• Ensure architectures meet regulatory and security requirements.
• Collaborate with Cyber Security and Risk teams.
• Drive Zero Trust and resilience best practices.
• Lead Cloud Architects and Engineering Leads.
• Coach senior technical professionals.
• Build capability and succession plans.

Skills

Azure

AWS

GCP DESIRABLE

Landing Zones

Kubernetes

Hybrid Cloud

Cloud Security

Zero Trust

IAM

CI/CD

DevSecOps

SRE

Tools

Terraform

GitHub Actions

Azure DevOps

Job description

Next Ventures seeks a Senior Cloud Architect to define and govern the enterprise cloud architecture strategy across AWS, Azure and hybrid environments. As the senior technical authority, you will lead cloud transformation, set engineering standards, ensure platform security and resilience, and align cloud capabilities with business strategy.

You will manage Cloud Architects and Engineering Lane Leads while partnering with Enterprise Architecture, Security, Operations and Product.