Solution Architect - OTT Platform

Role Purpose:

As a Solution Architect, you will lead the architecture and solution design of large-scale technology initiatives spanning multiple systems across the OTT platform ecosystem.

You will be responsible for translating business and product requirements into scalable, secure, resilient and maintainable technical solutions that align with the organisation's strategic objectives.

Our culture is highly delivery-focused, and the role extends well beyond producing architecture diagrams and design documentation.

You will work closely with Product, Engineering, Programme Management, Operations and external partners throughout the delivery lifecycle, providing hands-on architectural guidance, resolving technical challenges, managing design trade-offs and ensuring successful implementation of solutions through to production release.

Key Responsibilities:

- Solution Architecture: Lead the architecture and solution design of strategic initiatives across the OTT platform ecosystem, ensuring alignment with business objectives and technology strategy.

- Architectural Evolution: Drive architectural evolution by assessing existing systems, identifying improvement opportunities and challenging established assumptions and technical constraints, including the pragmatic application of AI-enabled tools and capabilities where they deliver measurable value.

- End-to-End Delivery: Own solution delivery from concept through implementation, providing technical leadership, resolving complex challenges and ensuring successful outcomes.

- Scalable Solution Design: Design scalable, secure, resilient and maintainable solutions, defining both functional and non-functional requirements and producing key architectural artefacts, including requirements for responsible AI use, data privacy, security, observability and governance where AI capabilities are involved.

- Stakeholder Collaboration: Collaborate with Product, Engineering, Delivery and Business stakeholders to ensure solutions adhere to architectural principles, standards and best practices.

- Architecture Reviews: Conduct architecture reviews, identify and mitigate technical risks, dependencies and gaps, and drive continuous quality improvement.

- Engineering Guidance: Support engineering teams throughout delivery with architectural guidance, governance and decision-making for complex technical issues.

- Promote effective and responsible use of AI-assisted engineering and delivery practices.

- Technology Innovation: Evaluate emerging technologies, industry trends, OTT best practices and relevant AI capabilities to enhance platform capabilities, engineering efficiency and long-term architectural sustainability.

Skills and Experience:

You'll Be Set Up for Success If You Have:

- 6+ years' experience as a Solution Architect or similar role, designing and delivering large-scale technology solutions in complex environments.

- Deep understanding of OTT platform architectures and domains, including subscriptions, monetisation, identity and access management (IAM), content and metadata management, and related platform services.

- Proven experience designing and delivering scalable, distributed systems using Microservices and Event-Driven Architecture (EDA) principles.

- Strong knowledge of cloud-native architectures and services, preferably AWS.

- Strong solution design expertise, including integration and management of third-party vendor solutions and in-house platforms.

- AI fluency: Practical understanding of Generative AI, Machine Learning and AI-enabled platform capabilities.

- Experience using AI-assisted tools to improve architecture, analysis, documentation, engineering productivity and problem-solving, while validating outputs and retaining appropriate technical judgement.

- Ability to assess AI use cases, dependencies, risks and non-functional requirements.

- Solid understanding of the software development lifecycle, with hands-on experience in technologies such as Node.js, Java, Python or Go, and strong knowledge of database technologies.

- Proven ability to solve complex business and technology challenges, navigate ambiguity and drive effective technical outcomes.

- Experience analysing and optimising business processes, operating models and technology landscapes.

- Strong documentation skills and experience applying industry-standard architecture and design methodologies.

- Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence decisions and communicate complex concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.

- Bachelor's degree in Engineering or Computer Science, or equivalent practical experience.

Even Better If You Have:

- Experience designing and implementing Identity and Access Management (IAM) solutions.

- Experience integrating payment providers, subscription billing platforms and related monetisation services.

- Experience working with external vendors and partners, including content security, authentication, authorisation and platform protection.

- Experience designing event-driven integrations, data pipelines and asynchronous workflows using messaging and streaming technologies.

- Experience working in Agile delivery environments, including Scrum, backlog refinement and technical planning.

Skills

Solution Architect, AWS, Microservices Architecture, Identity Management, Generative AI, OTT, Solution Design, iAM, Distributed Systems, Solution Implementation