Lead Architect - London - Williams Lea

Description

Join to apply for the Lead Architect role at Williams LeaThis range is provided by Williams Lea. Your actual pay will be based on your skills and experience — talk with your recruiter to learn more.


Base pay range Salary:
£120,000 per annum, plus company benefitsLocation: Remote (must be based in the UK)

Contract:

Full Time, PermanentShifts: 37.5 hours per week, Monday – Friday, 8:30am until 5pm with 1 hour unpaid lunch breakWork model: Fully remoteWilliams Lea seeks a Lead Architect to join our teamWilliams Lea is the leading global provider of skilled, technology-enabled, business-critical support services, with long-term trusted relationships with blue‐chip clients across investment banks, law firms and professional services firms.

Williams Lea employees, nearly 7000 people worldwide, provide efficient business services at client sites in often complex and highly regulated environments, from centralised Williams Lea onshore facilities, and through best cost company offshore locations.

Purpose of roleAs Lead Architect, you will be the technical thought leader responsible for defining and driving our enterprise platform architecture strategy.

You'll design and govern our cloud‐agnostic, security‐first infrastructure that supports autonomous AI agents, complex integrations, and stringent regulatory requirements.

This is a hands‐on leadership role where you'll balance strategic vision with practical implementation, ensuring our architecture scales elegantly across multi‐cloud environments while maintaining the trust of our enterprise clients.

You'll work at the intersection of cutting‐edge AI technology and enterprise security, enabling our platform to deliver innovative agentic AI capabilities within the constraints of SOC2, ISO27001, and industry‐specific compliance frameworks.

Key responsibilities Strategic Architecture & Technical Leadership Establish and evolve the enterprise platform architecture strategy, ensuring alignment with business objectives and regulatory requirementsRepresent the company's technical capabilities to enterprise clients, partners, and at industry events; publish technical content and contribute to architectural standardsDrive cloud‐agnostic design principles across AWS and Azure, ensuring portability and optimization for different deployment tiersEstablish and enforce technical standards, design patterns, and best practices across all engineering teamsOwn major architectural decisions affecting platform scalability, security, performance, and complianceAgentic AI Architecture Architect scalable infrastructure for autonomous AI agents, including orchestration, communication protocols, and execution environmentsImplement Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Agent‐to‐Agent (A2A) standards, ensuring interoperability and secure agent communicationDesign abstraction layers for multiple LLM providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Azure OpenAI, AWS Bedrock), enabling flexible model selection and cost optimisationEstablish frameworks for AI safety, ethics, model monitoring, and regulatory compliance specific to AI systemsSecurity & Compliance Architecture Embed security controls at every architectural layer, implementing zero‐trust principles and defense‐in‐depth strategiesArchitect solutions meeting SOC2, ISO27001, GDPR, amongst othersDesign data residency and processing controls for multi‐region deployments and client‐specific compliance requirementsEstablish comprehensive logging, monitoring, and audit trail capabilities across all deployment tiersDefine service boundaries, API contracts, and integration patterns for loosely coupled, independently deployable servicesDesign secure tenant isolation for SaaS deployments while enabling single‐tenant options for enterprise clientsArchitect for high availability (99.

9%+ uptime), low latency ( Define data management strategies including database per service patterns, event sourcing, and data pipeline architecturesTechnical Team Leadership Guide solution architects on customer‐specific implementations and enterprise integrationsWork closely with development teams across Conversational AI, Integration, and AI Platform functionsLead architectural review board, evaluating proposed changes and ensuring consistency across teamsDevelop architectural capabilities across the engineering organization through coaching and knowledge sharingPersonal attributes 10+ years in enterprise software architecture, with at least 5 years in senior/principal architect rolesProven track record designing and delivering large‐scale SaaS platforms for enterprise B2B customers ($250K+ contract values)

Regulated industry experience in financial services, legal, healthcare, or similar highly regulated domainsCloud‐native expertise with production experience architecting on both AWS and Azure at scaleSecurity architecture experience including zero‐trust, encryption, identity management, and compliance frameworksAI/ML platform experience, preferably including LLM integration and/or agentic AI systemsTechnical Expertise Cloud & Infrastructure (Essential) - Deep expertise in AWS services (EC2, ECS/EKS, Lambda, S3, RDS, DynamoDB, SQS/SNS, API Gateway, Cognito, KMS) – Strong knowledge of Azure (AKS, Functions, Cosmos DB, Service Bus, App Service, Key Vault, Azure OpenAI) – Container orchestration with Kubernetes in production environments – Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, CloudFormation, or similar) – Service mesh architectures (Istio, Linkerd) and API gateways – Multi‐cloud networking, VPNs, private endpoints, and hybrid connectivitySecurity & Compliance (Essential) - Zero‐trust architecture principles and implementation - Encryption standards (TLS 1.3, AES‐256, key management, HSM integration) - Identity and access management (OAuth 2.

0, OIDC, SAML, mTLS) - Security certifications:
SOC2 Type II, ISO27001, PCI DSS compliance - GDPR, data residency, and financial services regulatory requirements - Threat modeling, security architecture reviews, and vulnerability managementSoftware Architecture (Essential) - Microservices architecture and domain‐driven design - Event‐driven architecture and message‐based systems - API design (REST, GraphQL, gRPC) and API management - Database architecture (SQL, NoSQL, time‐series, vector databases) - Distributed systems patterns (circuit breakers, bulkheads, saga pattern) - Performance optimisation and scalability patternsAI & Agentic SystemsExperience with Model Context Protocol (MCP) or similar agent standardsReal‐time systems and WebSocket architecturesNatural language processing and conversational AI platformsFinancial data provider integrations (Bloomberg, Refinitiv)

Legal technology or document intelligence systemsCertifications AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional (essential)Microsoft Certified:

Azure Solutions Architect Expert (desirable)Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP/E) for GDPR expertise (desirable)Rewards and Benefits We believe in supporting our employees in both their professional and personal lives.

As part of our commitment to your well‐being, we offer a comprehensive benefits package, including but not limited to:25 days holiday, plus bank holidays (pro‐rata for part time roles)Salary sacrifice schemes, retail vouchers – including our TechScheme which can be used on a range of gadgets such as Smart TV's, laptops and computers or household appliances.

Life AssurancePrivate Medical InsuranceHealth AssessmentsDiscounted gym membershipsReferral SchemeEquality and Diversity The Company values the differences that a diverse workforce brings to the organisation and will not discriminate because of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race (which includes colour, nationality and ethnic or national origins), religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation (each of these being a "protected characteristic" in discrimination law).

It will not discriminate because of any other irrelevant factor and will build a culture that values openness, fairness and transparency.

If you have a disability and would prefer to apply in a different format or would like to make a reasonable adjustment to enable you to make an interview please contact us at (we do not accept applications to this email address).

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