Director, Platform Architect

Business Introduction

GSK remains committed to achieving bold commercial ambitions for the future. By 2031, we aim to deliver £40 billion in annual sales, leveraging our existing strong performance momentum to significantly increase our positive impact on the health of billions of patients globally. Our Ahead Together strategy is centred on early intervention to prevent and alter the course of disease, thereby protecting people and supporting healthcare systems.

Our diverse portfolio consists of vaccines, specialty medicines, and general medicines.

Through continuous innovation and a dedicated focus on scientific and technical excellence, we strive to develop and launch new, groundbreaking treatments that address critical health challenges.

Job Purpose

The Platform Architecture Director owns the architecture of the Cloud & Engineering Platforms domain, setting the target architecture, reference designs and standards, leading the architecture team, and ensuring the domain is coherent, secure and aligned to enterprise architecture. The role owns the design assurance process across the Cloud, Edge and Modern Engineering Platform services and embeds AI patterns into the domain architecture for accelerated delivery and intelligent operations.

The role leads architects rather than producing every design. Individual platform designs sit with the Platform Architects in the team, engineering delivery sits with the Engineering Director and the platform engineering teams, platform roadmaps sit with the Platform Managers, and enterprise-level standards sit with Enterprise Architecture. Domain strategy, cost and reliability posture sit with the Head of Platform Domain.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the domain target architecture, standards and reference designs, aligned to DPTF strategy and to enterprise architecture.
• Lead the architecture team across the domain, managing performance, capability development and succession.
• Own the design assurance process for the domain, setting what must be reviewed, by whom, and against which standards.
• Embed AI patterns into the domain architecture, so that AI-assisted delivery and intelligent operations are designed in rather than added later.
• Architect for reliability and resilience by design across the domain, supporting the SLOs the domain commits to.
• Ensure security and compliance, including GxP where relevant, are designed into the domain rather than inspected in afterwards.
• Guide technology selection and modernisation across the domain, measuring outcomes against architecture OKRs.
• Set the architecture standards that supplier and managed-service solutions in the domain must meet.
• Align the domain to enterprise architecture and technology strategy, negotiating exceptions through Enterprise Architecture rather than around it.
• Advise the Head of Platform Domain on architectural risk, technical debt and the investment needed to address either.
• Increase pattern reuse and reduce rework across the domain, evidencing both with measures rather than assertion.
• Hold the boundaries with the Platform Architects on individual platform designs, the Engineering Director on build and delivery, and Enterprise Architecture on enterprise standards.

Education & Professional Qualifications

• Degree in a technology or engineering discipline, or equivalent practical experience (e.g., Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems).
• Architecture certifications desirable (e.g., TOGAF, or recognised cloud or network architecture certification relevant to the domain).

Area of Specialisation

• Domain architecture leadership, covering target architecture, standards, reference designs and design assurance governance.
• Architecture team leadership, covering capability development, design review practice and enterprise negotiation.

Experience Required

• Overall 18 Years and typically 10-12 years in technology architecture, including at least three years leading an architecture team with line responsibility.
• Proven experience leading architecture for a large-scale Cloud, Infrastructure & Engineering domain
• Track record running design assurance governance, including holding a standard against delivery pressure.
• Experience architecting for reliability, resilience and security at scale, working to SLOs and error budgets.
• Experience in a regulated environment, ideally pharmaceutical or GxP.
• Experience setting architecture standards for supplier and managed-service delivery and enforcing them.
• Practical grasp of AI patterns for assisted delivery and intelligent operations at architecture level.

Skills/Background

• Executive communication, translating architectural risk into investment and consequence for non-architects.
• Leadership of technical specialists, including developing architects who are strong individually but new to influence.
• Judgement about when the domain should diverge from enterprise standards and how to get that agreed properly.
• Ability to hold a standard when delivery timelines argue against it, without becoming an obstacle.
• Commercial awareness when directing supplier and vendor architecture decisions.
• Comfort making the cost of technical debt visible to leadership rather than absorbing it quietly.

Skills

Why GSK?

Uniting science, technology and talent to get ahead of disease together.

GSK is a global biopharma company with a purpose to unite science, technology and talent to get ahead of disease together. We aim to positively impact the health of 2.5 billion people by the end of the decade, as a successful, growing company where people can thrive. We get ahead of disease by preventing and treating it with innovation in specialty medicines and vaccines. We focus on four therapeutic areas: respiratory, immunology and inflammation; oncology; HIV; and infectious diseases - to impact health at scale.

People and patients around the world count on the medicines and vaccines we make, so we’re committed to creating an environment where our people can thrive and focus on what matters most. Our culture of being ambitious for patients, accountable for impact and doing the right thing is the foundation for how, together, we deliver for patients, shareholders and our people.

Inclusion at GSK:

As an employer committed to Inclusion, we encourage you to reach out if you need any adjustments during the recruitment process.

Please contact our Recruitment Team at [email protected] to discuss your needs.

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