Technical Architect

Sphere Digital Recruitment; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 76,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

A recruitment agency specializing in digital roles is looking for a Technical Architect to work on a government-backed initiative in London. This role involves defining and maintaining technical architecture with a focus on cloud infrastructure, data platforms, and security. The ideal candidate should have over 10 years of experience in software engineering or technical architecture, hands-on expertise in major cloud platforms, and strong data architecture skills. This position is full-time with a competitive salary of up to £90K.

Qualifications

• 10+ years' experience in software engineering or technical architecture roles.
• Hands-on expertise in major cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
• Strong data architecture skills for structured and unstructured data.

Responsibilities

• Define and maintain platform architecture across cloud infrastructure.
• Identify and maintain content data standards and schemas.
• Champion best practices for architecture and security.
• Contribute to technical governance and architectural standards.
• Develop and maintain technical documentation and roadmaps.

Skills

Software engineering

Systems design

Platform engineering

Technical architecture

Cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP)

Data architecture

Security and compliance standards

Job description

Technical Architect - up to £90K

• 12-month FTC with potential to go perm
• You must be immediately available or have maximum 1-month notice period
• You must be based in London as there are 3 days per week in Central London office

About the role

This is a government‑backed initiative that will enable creators to licence and commercialise their digital content on transparent terms, while giving AI developers and innovators ethical access to high‑quality data at scale.

We are at the very start of building the platform and are bringing together a project team to run a pilot that tests key assumptions, prototypes a technical solution, builds a minimum lovable product, and informs the future shape of the project.

This is a unique opportunity to shape an initiative with huge scaling potential. We are looking for candidates who are resourceful, thrive in ambiguity, are effective in managing stakeholders, understand how to build solutions that scale, and who take delight in exceeding customers' expectations.

The Technical Architect works closely with the platform provider to define, govern, and evolve the technical architecture of the platform, with a strong emphasis on data, integrations, APIs, cloud infrastructure, and security. The role is instrumental in ensuring the platform supplier meets all required technical standards and requirements, enabling the delivery of a secure, intuitive, and reliable marketplace for both content providers and buyers.

This role applies deep technical expertise to lead customer and content owner onboarding, working in partnership with Solutions Architects to ensure content, metadata, and integrations conform to platform and industry standards. It is a hands‑on position centred on technical architecture and system design, rather than business development or client relationship management.

The role plays a key part in shaping the future technical service offering by applying lessons learned from real implementations and early platform usage.

Key Responsibilities

• Work with the platform provider to define and maintain the platform architecture across cloud infrastructure, data platforms, application services, APIs, integration layers, and security.
• Identify, define, and maintain content data standards, schemas, and metadata norms with Solutions Architects, driving adoption of scalable and interoperable best practices.
• Champion best practices for platform architecture, cloud infrastructure, API design, integration patterns, and security, with hands‑on involvement in implementation support and complex troubleshooting.
• Contribute to technical governance and architectural standards, ensuring reliability, security, and future adaptability of the platform.
• Develop and maintain technical architecture documentation, design artefacts, and technical roadmaps in close collaboration with the Product Manager.
• Work closely with the Product Manager, project leadership, and platform provider to deliver the minimum lovable product and inform the future evolution of the platform.

Person Specification

• 10+ years' experience in software engineering, systems design, platform engineering, or technical architecture roles.
• Demonstrated experience designing and supporting cloud‑native, distributed systems in production environments.
• Strong, hands‑on expertise in at least one major cloud platform (AWS, Azure, or GCP), including compute, networking, storage, and identity and access management.
• Strong data architecture skills, including experience with structured and unstructured data, metadata management, and schema design.
• Proven ability to analyse, challenge, and improve technical designs proposed by engineers or third‑party vendors.
• Experience working in environments with meaningful security, compliance, or data governance requirements.

Preferred Experience

• Design and implementation of scalable, data‑intensive platforms.
• Experience integrating multiple internal and external systems.
• Familiarity with infrastructure‑as‑code, automation, and modern DevOps practices.

Sphere Digital Recruitment currently have a variety of job opportunities across digital so feel free to get in touch with us to find out how we can help you. Please take a look at our website.

Sphere is an equal opportunities employer. We encourage applications regardless of ethnic origin, race, religious beliefs, age, disability, gender or sexual orientation, and any other protected status as required by applicable law.

If you require any adjustments or additional support during the recruitment process for any reason whatsoever, please let us know.