Principal Architect

Principal Architect (6-month Fixed Term Contract)
£140,000
1 day per week in office (either London or Manchester)
These lot have been a client of mine for a couple of years now and continuing to do some really good things. They are a forward-thinking fintech bank utilising cutting-edge technology to empower customers financially. They have created a number of financial products for underserved market segments and their intermediary-focused tech platform simplifies buy-to-let mortgages for brokers and landlords. With over £150 million in strategic investment they are set to grow even further over the coming years.
Where you come in:
They are looking for a Principal Architect to join the business on a 6 month FTC (fixed term contract) where you will play a crucial role in developing their technology strategy and enterprise architecture during their transition from a predominantly build-focused approach to a COTS/SaaS-driven model. You will collaborate with stakeholders across the company to identify and define the technology changes needed to support their business strategy effectively.
The day to day:

• Contribute to the definition of the technology strategy.
• Implement an Enterprise Architecture framework to facilitate the development of an enterprise technology architecture.
• Define and maintain a current state enterprise technology architecture, identifying duplication, gaps, and opportunities for technology improvements.
• Define the target enterprise technology architecture, ensuring alignment with and support for the business and technology strategies.
• Collaborate with Principal Engineers to define and maintain enterprise technology architecture and roadmaps, aligning them with business and technology goals. (they are very good engineers)

Skills and Experience:

• Experience introducing enterprise architecture frameworks (principles, standards, capability models, governance, process, etc.) to organizations.
• Working knowledge of business, application, data, and technology architecture.
• Ability to work effectively in environments undergoing change, adopting an iterative and adaptive approach.
• Excellent relationship-building and interpersonal skills, including teamwork, facilitation, influencing, and negotiation abilities with various stakeholders up to C-level.
• Capacity to quickly understand new technologies, assess their suitability, and estimate the financial impact of adopting them.
• Previous experience in financial services (preferred) or a similar regulated environment.

Technologies they use:

• Cloud: AWS with a preference for native and serverless services (e.g., API Gateway, AWS Lambda, AWS Step Functions, Kinesis, DynamoDB)
• Programming languages: Python for software engineering, Terraform, AWS SAM, and Cloud Formation for IaC
• Database: SQL (Postgres) and NoSQL (DynamoDB)
• APIs: Primarily RESTful APIs with AWS API Gateway
• CI/CD: GitHub Actions, AWS CodePipeline, Jenkins, and tools such as Trivy, Bandit, Sonarqube, Dependabot, etc.
• Big data: AWS services like S3, Redshift, Glue, Kinesis

The role is mostly remote but there is a requirement to head to either their London or North office once a week (some weeks there won't be travel but 9 times out of 10 please expect this)
Whilst this is a 6 month FTC, there could be an option to extend this into a fulltime employment contract near the end of the initial period.
They are keen to make this hire asap.