Software Architect

Are you ready to design and shape the core architecture of a platform built to support global scale, rapid growth, and long-term innovation?

We are at the start of a major systems transformation - modernising a mission-critical platform into a cloud-native, event-driven, high-performance ecosystem. With significant investment and deep technical ambition, this is a chance to build the foundation for the next decade of our engineering evolution.

This is not just a coding role. We're seeking a Software Architect who combines technical depth with strategic thinking - someone who can set vision, mentor teams, and lead architectural decision-making while staying close enough to the code to guide best practice.

What You'll Do

• Define the architecture, design principles, and technical roadmap for a highly scalable, distributed platform.
• Lead end-to-end solution design across event-driven, microservices, and cloud-native systems.
• Drive the modernisation journey: .NET to cloud, service boundaries, data flows, operational tooling.
• Work hands-on where required - providing technical leadership, code review, and architectural oversight.
• Partner with stakeholders across engineering, product, data and business leadership.
• Embed performance, reliability, observability, and resilience into system design from day one.
• Help shape our evolving use of AI/ML for optimisation, automation, and predictive insights.

• Proven experience architecting distributed, high-throughput platforms in enterprise or scale-up environments.
• Strong technical background with C# / .NET and deep understanding of microservices and API design.
• Hands-on experience with event streaming and real-time data systems (e.g., Kafka).
• Solid database experience (SQL / PostgreSQL / SQL Server).
• Experience architecting or migrating systems into AWS (preferred) or another major cloud.
• Ability to lead, influence, mentor and align cross-functional engineering teams.
• Experience guiding platform modernisation or large-scale rebuilds.
• Exposure to or curiosity about applying AI/ML to real-world engineering problems.

Why Join Us * Hybrid working - choose Manchester or Staffordshire as your primary hub. * Major influence over the architecture and future of a high-scale engineering platform. * Opportunity to introduce modern patterns, observability, DevOps, automation, and AI-driven capabilities. * High autonomy, strong engineering culture, supportive leadership team. If you're driven by architecting for scale, shaping technical strategy, and leading teams toward world-class engineering delivery, we'd love to speak to you.