Lead Software Architect

Owns the architecture function for the Technology Division. Sets the division-wide technical direction the target architecture, the technology radar, the non-functional envelopes (performance, cost, security, reliability) that every system must live inside and holds the Software Architects accountable to it. Where the Software Architect governs how code is written, the Lead Software Architect governs what gets built, how systems fit together, and which architectural bets the division makes.

Does not write code. Owns the Architect agent and is accountable for the quality of every architecture artefact the agent produces across all domain teams - system designs, integration contracts, data models, migration plans. Chairs the Architecture Review Board, is the final decision-maker on cross-domain design disputes and build-versus-buy calls, and is the escalation point when the Software Architect cannot resolve a question inside their own scope.

Acts as the technical counterpart to the Head of Engineering on planning and risk: translates product strategy into an architecture roadmap, surfaces the architectural cost of proposed work before it is committed, and owns the division technical debt position.

Key Responsibilities

Architecture Strategy and Ownership

• Define and maintain the division target architecture and the architecture roadmap that gets us there
• Own the technology radar: which languages, frameworks, datastores, and platforms are adopt, trial, assess, or hold
• Set non-functional requirement envelopes - latency, throughput, availability, unit cost, data residency - and enforce them at design time
• Own build-versus-buy-versus-agent decisions for platform-level capabilities
• Maintain the Architecture Decision Record corpus as the division source of truth for why things are the way they are

Cross-Domain System Design

• Own the system-of-systems view: service boundaries, integration contracts, event flows, and shared data models across all domain teams
• Arbitrate cross-domain design disputes and boundary ownership questions
• Review and approve designs for anything that crosses a domain boundary, touches shared infrastructure, or introduces a new external dependency
• Own architecture-level migration and decommissioning plans for legacy systems

Architect Agent Ownership

• Own the Architect agent - define, train, and continuously improve its skills so it produces designs that conform to the target architecture and NFR envelopes
• Encode architectural guardrails, decision heuristics, and rejection criteria into the agent so non-compliant designs are caught before human review
• Audit Architect agent output through structured spot checks; feed findings back into agent skills
• Set the standard for how the Software Architects operate their agents, and review their agent skill definitions

Leading the Architecture Function

• Line-manage, coach, and develop the Software Architects
• Chair the Architecture Review Board; set its cadence, entry criteria, and decision rights
• Ensure the Software Architect coding standards stay coherent with the target architecture
• Own architecture onboarding and levelling for the function; grow the bench

Risk, Debt, and Governance

• Own the division technical debt register: quantify it, prioritise it, and negotiate paydown into the roadmap
• Partner with the Information Security and GRC Lead on security-by-design and threat modelling at the architecture layer
• Partner with the Infrastructure Manager and Platform Lead on capacity, cost, and reliability architecture
• Partner with the QA Lead on testability as an architectural property
• Report architecture health, risk, and debt position to the Head of Engineering and the Technology Division Manager

Must Have:

• 18+ years of experience
• Expert in software architecture, design patterns, and SaaS application design
• Expert in API and integration contract design (REST, GraphQL, gRPC, event-driven) and data architecture and modelling
• Expert in non-functional requirements engineering - performance, reliability, and cost
• Advanced cloud, platform, and security architecture, including threat modelling - AWS required, OCI a strong plus
• Expert in architecting agent configuration and training, with advanced agent skill design, guardrail engineering, and prompt engineering for system design
• Expert in technical decision-making and arbitration, with advanced experience leading senior technical individuals and negotiating roadmap with stakeholders
• Expert in architecture documentation and ADRs, with advanced executive communication of technical risk