Senior Enterprise Architect – Modernization & Cloud Strategy

Ascent Software; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 110,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Ascent Software is seeking an Enterprise Architect to lead the modernization of complex enterprise landscapes, focusing on scalable, secure, and governed architectures. You will guide monolithic to modular migrations, drive event-driven and API-led integration, and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements.

The role requires deep hands-on expertise across .NET, databases, microservices, DevSecOps, and cloud-agnostic architectures, with strong collaboration across business, data, and

Qualifications

• Demonstrated enterprise architecture experience across large-scale legacy modernization and regulated environments.
• Ability to translate current-state assessments into pragmatic target-state roadmaps.
• Strong knowledge of microservices, domain-driven design, APIs, and contract-first architecture.
• Experience with event-driven architectures, Kafka-based streaming, and schema governance.
• Hands-on .NET, REST/gRPC APIs, MSSQL/PostgreSQL, and modern modernization tech.
• Understanding of cloud-agnostic and hybrid patterns including Kubernetes & containerization.
• DevSecOps, CI/CD, IaC, and audit-ready change management are essential.
• Ability to define resilience, observability, monitoring, and SLOs for critical platforms.
• Familiarity with governed data platforms, lineage, data quality, and regulatory evidence.
• Excellent stakeholder management and cross-functional coordination skills.
• Balance ambition with pragmatic migration and business continuity.

Responsibilities

• Own enterprise architecture assessment and target-state definition for large-scale legacy modernization initiatives across multiple domains.
• Define pragmatic modernization pathways considering monolithic to modular transitions and service decomposition.
• Specify guardrails, reference patterns, and integration standards for scalable delivery.
• Guide decomposition of legacy capabilities into domain-aligned services and governed workflows.
• Support migration strategies using strangler patterns, parallel runs, and phased cutovers.
• Provide architecture direction for integration modernization across messaging, APIs, and event streaming.
• Collaborate with data teams to align modernization with governed data platforms and reporting readiness.
• Lead architecture governance forums and design reviews to ensure alignment with objectives.

Skills

Enterprise Architecture

Legacy Modernization

Application Architecture

Microservices Architecture

Event-Driven Architecture

API & Integration Architecture

Cloud-Agnostic Architecture

Kubernetes

Kafka

.NET

MSSQL / PostgreSQL

Data Governance & Lineage

DevSecOps

CI/CD & IaC

Observability

Databricks

Domain-Driven Design

Tools

Docker

Databricks

Kafka tooling

Job description

Ascent Software is seeking an Enterprise Architect to lead the modernization of complex enterprise landscapes, focusing on scalable, secure, and governed architectures. You will guide monolithic to modular migrations, drive event-driven and API-led integration, and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements.

The role requires deep hands-on expertise across .NET, databases, microservices, DevSecOps, and cloud-agnostic architectures, with strong collaboration across business, data, and