Principal Architect - Microservices / Platform

Our Principal Architects are responsible for leading the architectural vision and strategy for complex projects across the business. This role involves overseeing the design, planning, and execution of architectural solutions, ensuring they align with business objectives and technical requirements. Principal Architects play a crucial role in guiding teams, managing stakeholder expectations, and driving innovation within the organization.

• Architectural Vision: Define and lead the architectural vision and strategy for projects.
• Project Oversight: Oversee the design, planning, and execution of architectural solutions.
• Stakeholder Management: Collaborate with stakeholders to understand their needs and ensure alignment with business goals.
• Technical Leadership: Provide technical leadership and mentorship to architectural and engineering teams.
• Quality Assurance: Ensure that architectural designs meet quality standards and comply with industry regulations.
• Innovation: Drive innovation by exploring and implementing new technologies and methodologies.
• Documentation: Create and maintain comprehensive architectural documentation.
• Risk Management: Identify and mitigate risks associated with architectural decisions.
• Resource Allocation: Manage resources effectively to ensure project success.
• Continuous Improvement: Promote a culture of continuous improvement and learning within the architecture team.

• Technical Expertise: Extensive knowledge of architectural design principles and practices.
• Leadership Skills: Strong leadership and mentorship abilities.
• Communication Skills: Excellent communication skills to interact with stakeholders and team members.
• Analytical Skills: Ability to analyse complex technical problems and develop effective solutions.
• Project Management: Strong project management skills to oversee architectural projects.
• Innovation: Creative thinking to drive innovation and explore new technologies.
• Collaboration: Strong collaboration skills to work effectively with cross-functional teams.
• Attention to Detail: High attention to detail to ensure architectural quality and compliance.
• Adaptability: Flexibility to adapt to new technologies and changing business needs.
• Industry Knowledge: Extensive knowledge of industry standards and best practices
• Enterprise Microservices Architecture
  • Proven track record in designing and governing large-scale, event-driven, domain-oriented microservice solutions.
  • Ability to enforce clear boundaries (bounded contexts, APIs, contracts, data ownership).
  • Skilled in the “strangler pattern,” saga orchestration, CQRS, and event sourcing.
• Migration & Modernisation Expertise
  • Deep knowledge of migration models (strangler fig, re-platforming, re-hosting, re-architecting).
  • Experienced in managing hybrid environments where legacy and modern services coexist.
  • Strong background in API “bridges” / universal APIs to enable gradual cutover without technical debt.
• Cloud Architecture (AWS & Azure)
  • Hands-on experience architecting resilient, secure, and cost-optimised workloads on both AWS and Azure.
  • Proficient in managed services (e.g., AWS ECS/EKS, Azure AKS, Event Grid, Service Bus, Lambda, Logic Apps).
  • Skilled in multi-cloud and hybrid patterns, including networking, identity, and data integration.
• Security, Compliance & Governance Mindset
  • Strong command of cloud security (IAM, zero-trust, encryption, secrets management).
  • Knowledge of UK/EU data regulations (GDPR, safeguarding, data residency).
  • Ability to build secure-by-design reference architectures and align with enterprise security policies.
• Data & Integration Strategy
  • Expertise in designing data pipelines across operational, analytical, and event-driven layers.
  • Mastery of messaging patterns (Kafka, Event Hub, SNS/SQS), API management, and data mesh/federation approaches.
  • Clear strategy for legacy database integration and data migration with minimal downtime.
• Scalability, Resilience & Performance Engineering
  • Ability to design architectures with high availability, disaster recovery, and observability baked in.
  • Proven experience with distributed caching, load balancing, multi-region failover, and chaos engineering practices.
  • Hands-on with SLAs, SLOs, SLIs, and performance tuning at enterprise scale.
• SRE & Platform Engineering Leadership
  • Expert in CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Bicep, CloudFormation).
  • Skilled in embedding reliability engineering principles (monitoring, alerting, auto-healing).
  • Ability to mentor platform engineering teams to build reusable accelerators and golden paths.
• AI-Delivered & AI-Enhanced Architecture
  • Ability to integrate AI agents and AI-powered services into the SDLC and architecture.
  • Experience with AI in governance (code quality, compliance checks), delivery acceleration (AI code generation, testing), and operational insights (predictive monitoring, anomaly detection).
  • Understanding of responsible AI, compliance, and human-in-the-loop orchestration.
• Strategic Stakeholder Management & Communication
  • Able to translate complex architectures into clear, business-aligned roadmaps for executives.
  • Skilled at bridging product, engineering, and operations with a common architecture vision.
  • Excellent at governance boards, architecture review forums, and C-suite presentations.
• Innovation Drive
  • Ability to anticipate technology shifts (AI-native services, edge computing, serverless).
  • Inspire teams to adopt best practices while balancing delivery velocity with long-term maintainability.
  • Capable of setting and evolving architecture standards, patterns, and frameworks across the enterprise.

Wellbeing that means something

• 26 days’ holiday + bank holidays (and the option to buy more) plus 1 paid volunteering day every year
• Exceptional family leave, 26 weeks fully paid maternity/adoption, 4 weeks fully paid paternity, 22 weeks fully paid shared parental leave, plus 5 days paid bereavement leave
• Robust sick pay of up to 13 weeks full pay + 13 weeks half pay
• 24/7 Employee Assistance Programme for confidential support
• Private medical insurance for everyone, no medical-history exclusions

Financial benefits that have your back

• Group-wide performance bonus, when we win, you win
• Income protection: up to 75% salary for 5 years if you ever need it

Grow your career with us

• SkillsHub learning platform with leadership pathways, future-manager training, and a huge online library
• Access to external training and apprenticeships

Making a Difference 

• MatchIt! Fundraise for a cause close to your heart and OneAdvanced will match part of the funding
• Pennies from Heaven donate the pennies from your pay check to help make a difference without lifting a finger

Plus plenty other flexible benefits to suit your lifestyle on our RewardHub, including:

• ULEV car scheme with 1,000+ models
• Dental insurance, Health Cash Plan, Critical Illness Cover, Partner Life Cover

OneAdvanced is one of the UK's largest providers of business software and services serving 20,000+ global customers with an annual turnover of £330M+. We manage 1.5 million 111 calls per month, support over 2 million Further Education learners across the UK, handle over 10 million wills, and so much more. Our mission is to power the world of work and, as you can see, our software underpins some of the UK's most critical sectors.

We invest in our brilliant people. They are at the heart of our success as we strive to be a diverse, inclusive and engaging place to work that not only powers the world of work, but empowers the growth, ambitions and talent of our people.

To learn more about working at OneAdvanced please click here