Technical Director | AJ100 Studio | Route to equity/ownership

Lofthouse Group; Greater London; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Lofthouse Group in the United Kingdom is seeking a Technical Director to shape how an architectural and interiors practice operates across all studios and projects. This leadership role focuses on influence, culture, and practical technical delivery, not auditing.

You will create a usable toolkit, build a central technical team, and guide a multi-year programme of improvement with studio leaders, while safeguarding the firm's technical reputation and standards.

Qualifications

• Solid post-qualification experience in architecture, interiors, engineering or a related built environment discipline, with several delivered projects.
• A strong working knowledge of UK Building Regulations, the Building Safety Act, CDM and design safety, and quality assurance.
• The ability to influence senior, independent-minded people without relying on formal authority, and to make technical issues simple and commercially relevant.
• Energy, warmth and resilience, with the patience to bring people with you over the long term.

Responsibilities

• Building trusted relationships with the practice's principals, understanding each studio's priorities before proposing change
• Developing a practical, genuinely usable toolkit of technical standards, guidance and ways of working, shaped around how the studios actually operate
• Leading a three to five year programme of incremental improvement, working with studio leaders as partners rather than imposing change on them
• Leading and growing a specialist team covering building regulations and planning delivery, CDM and design safety, and inclusive design, and positioning them as the practice's go-to experts
• Growing the internal culture of technical reviews and knowledge sharing, and spotting where good practice in one studio should be shared with others
• Setting the technical training and development agenda in partnership with People & Culture
• Keeping the practice's quality assurance standards (including ISO and professional indemnity requirements) in good shape, and reporting to the Board on technical performance
• Acting as a source of pragmatic technical judgement for principals, and supporting client conversations that call for senior technical credibility

Job description

What if your next role let you shape how an entire practice works, across every studio and every project, without being turned into the compliance police? Our client, a highly regarded, fast-growing architecture and interiors practice, is looking for a Technical Director to do exactly that.

The Opportunity

This is a newly defined, practice-wide leadership role at the heart of our client's technical offer. The brief is clear: this is not an audit role. It is about influence, relationships and culture, helping talented, independent-minded studio leaders get a little better every year, and showing them why it pays off for their projects, their clients and their bottom line.

Our client is best described as a group of entrepreneurs held together by a shared platform. Each studio is led by a principal who runs it as their own business, and the practice has grown almost entirely organically into a financially strong, increasingly international firm. Decision-makers are in the building every day and easy to reach, so good ideas move quickly.

You will be trusted to build something of your own: a practical technical toolkit, a respected central team, and a multi-year programme of improvement that studios choose to adopt because it genuinely helps them. You will also be the guardian of a market-leading technical reputation, keeping the practice at the frontier of the industry.

What you will be doing

• Building trusted relationships with the practice's principals, understanding each studio's priorities before proposing change
• Developing a practical, genuinely usable toolkit of technical standards, guidance and ways of working, shaped around how the studios actually operate
• Leading a three to five year programme of incremental improvement, working with studio leaders as partners rather than imposing change on them
• Leading and growing a specialist team covering building regulations and planning delivery, CDM and design safety, and inclusive design, and positioning them as the practice's go-to experts
• Growing the internal culture of technical reviews and knowledge sharing, and spotting where good practice in one studio should be shared with others
• Setting the technical training and development agenda in partnership with People & Culture
• Keeping the practice's quality assurance standards (including ISO and professional indemnity requirements) in good shape, and reporting to the Board on technical performance
• Acting as a source of pragmatic technical judgement for principals, and supporting client conversations that call for senior technical credibility

What's in it for you?

• Real autonomy and influence across every studio and every project, not a narrow remit
• Direct access to the practice's owners, with no distant leadership layer dictating direction
• A genuine, well-defined route to equity partnership, typically within a couple of years of joining
• An uncapped bonus scheme alongside a competitive base salary
• The chance to build a function from the ground up, rather than inheriting someone else's system
• A growing business with a strong UK base and an expanding international footprint
• A passionate, enjoyable culture where getting things done matters more than process for its own sake

About you

Nobody will tick every box here, and our client is deliberately open on background. You might already lead technical standards at another practice or consultancy, be an architect or interior designer at Senior Associate level ready for a broader, more strategic role, or come from an engineering or developer-side delivery background.

What matters most is that you have:

• Solid post-qualification experience in architecture, interiors, engineering or a related built environment discipline, with a several delivered projects in any sector
• A strong working knowledge of UK Building Regulations, the Building Safety Act, CDM and design safety, and quality assurance
• The ability to influence senior, independent-minded people without relying on formal authority, and to make technical issues simple and commercially relevant
• Energy, warmth and resilience, with the patience to bring people with you over the long term

If this sounds like the kind of role you would enjoy, but you are not sure your experience lines up perfectly, please get in touch anyway. Our client cares far more about who you are and how you work than about a perfect CV.