Head of Architecture

Location:

London

Department:

Technology

Salary Details:

Not Specified

Advertising End Date:

Not Specified

Job Description

We are News UK Technology: using technology to innovate and lead the global conversation on the future of media and storytelling. We keep people at the heart of our business through value-driven and inclusive practices enabling our staff to grow and thrive. As such, we are proud members of Tech Talent Charter UK with 34% of our Tech roles filled by gender minorities. News UK Tech is an award-winning team, winning Team of the Year at the UK Business and Innovation Awards, 2023.

Architecture & Engineering Productivity: We play a pivotal role in shaping the technological landscape of our enterprise while ensuring efficiency, security, and scalability across all engineering endeavours.

Our software architecture team collaborates closely with business, product, and platform teams to drive informed decision-making that aligns with our overarching enterprise goals. With a primary focus on simplification and optimisation, this team leads strategic initiatives aimed at streamlining our technological infrastructure. By identifying and eliminating redundancies, unnecessary software, and services, they pave the way for accelerated innovation and agility in the future.

In parallel, our engineering productivity team is dedicated to implementing and enforcing cybersecurity policies and best practices across the organisation. This includes but is not limited to disaster recovery planning and secrets management. By centralising these efforts, we ensure consistency, reliability, and compliance while relieving individual engineering teams from the burden of developing their own solutions.

Your Role: As the Head of Architecture, you will play a pivotal role in ensuring alignment between digital teams' objectives and architectural decisions with the technology and engineering strategies set forth by senior leadership. Your passion for software engineering and architecture, coupled with a commitment to nurturing talent and fostering a culture of excellence, will be instrumental in driving the organisation towards world-class engineering practices.

Day to day you will:

Architectural Leadership:

• Lead the software architecture discipline across the digital technology estate.

• Provide architectural direction to business and digital technology teams.

• Develop and maintain architectural blueprints and reference architectures in line with business objectives.

Strategic Planning:

• Maintain in-depth knowledge of strategic plans across the business.

• Develop and maintain an enterprise-wide technology roadmap aligned with strategic goals.

Best Practices and Standards:

• Facilitate the establishment of best practices for end-to-end system design and implementation.

• Specify and maintain processes such as the Request for Comment (RFC) process to guide teams in digital product development.

Knowledge Management:

• Cultivate a centralised knowledge repository and disseminate information widely across teams.

• Stay forward-looking on industry trends, emerging technologies, and best practices.

Stakeholder Engagement:

• Cultivate relationships with business stakeholders to understand their needs.

• Chair the Architecture Design Authority (ADA) to review significant initiatives and design changes.

Technology Solutions and Compliance:

• Ensure technology solutions are cost-effective, scalable, and compliant with regulations and standards.

• Work with the technology team to design and implement solutions meeting business needs.

Team Management:

• Manage the Architecture team (4 direct reports based in London).

• Manage the Engineering Productivity team (2 direct reports, 7 people based in Bulgaria). Currently focused on implementing cybersecurity policy and improving engineering standards.

• Provide guidance, leadership, mentoring, and coaching to the technology team.

What we’re looking for from you: You should be passionate about software engineering & architecture as well as the culture needed to truly practise it. You should want to nurture and develop talent and teams as well as the communities both internal and external (open source) needed to truly build world class engineering organisations.

• A Strategic-minded individual adept at translating business objectives into tangible architectural plans and solutions, while crafting and implementing long-term architectural roadmaps aligned with business goals.

• A skilled engineer with recent and relevant software engineering experience, demonstrating proficiency in managing complex technology ecosystems, particularly within AWS and GCP. Capable of building innovative and impactful products across multiple platforms, with specific expertise in CloudFront, EKS, Lambda, SNS, SQS, S3, EC2, DynamoDB, and Aurora. Proficient in programming languages including Node.js, JavaScript, TypeScript, Java, and Python, along with database management systems such as MySQL and Postgres.

• Proven leader with a track record of building and leading high-performing teams, fostering a culture of excellence and collaboration to drive success in architectural initiatives aligned with business strategy.

• Experienced in working with world-class consumer products, ensuring high scalability and performance, and engaging with relevant communities and open-source projects to stay abreast of industry trends and innovations.

• Technically adept individual with expertise in technical architecture and a focus on simplifying technology ecosystems, demonstrated by a track record of developing and implementing effective, efficient, and scalable technology solutions.

• Excellent communicator with strong communication skills, capable of articulating technical concepts effectively to non-technical stakeholders, and possessing strong problem-solving abilities with a creative approach to resolving complex technical challenges.

• Understanding of the cybersecurity space, including knowledge of cyber defence products and services, and experience with cloud-based architecture.

If you think you have what it takes but don’t tick every requirement on the list, please do apply. We recognise that considering someone’s potential as well as their experience is a great way to hire. We want to hear from people who have a passion to learn and develop.

We are News UK : One of the leading media businesses in the UK and Ireland. Our newsbrands include The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun, The Sun on Sunday and The TLS. Our national broadcast brands include talkSPORT, Times Radio, TalkTV and Virgin Radio UK, and we have market-leading local radio stations across Ireland. Our world-famous brands provide news, analysis, opinion and entertainment to almost 40 million people each month. Spanning print and pixel, audio and video, events and experiences, our multiplatform brands are home to a plurality of opinion, representing the diverse communities we serve. News UK is wholly owned by News Corp.

Life at News: Driven by passion, guided by principles and acting with purpose. We represent, reflect and reach the nation, telling the stories that matter. We inform our audiences so that they can make decisions based on trusted information.

To do this, we believe our employees must represent different backgrounds, perspectives and experiences. We strive to maximise and encourage every individual’s potential and ensure everyone feels valued. We support this through ourDiversity, Equity and Inclusion Strategy (https://www.news.co.uk/more-than-the-news/diversity-inclusion/) , which focuses on three main priorities - attracting talent from a wider, more representative pool, developing equity programmes to drive better representation in our leadership, and ensuring diversity and inclusivity in our workforce as well as the journalism and content we produce. We also currently have12 employee led networks and groups (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMCi-KiMlL4&t=2s) that support our strategy and connect like minded employees socially.

Benefits:

Some of our benefits include:

• Maternityleave up to 18 weeks full basic salary &paternityleave up to 2 weeks

• Wide range oftrainingavailable, plus full LinkedIn Learning access

• Private medical insuranceincluding coverage for pre-existing conditions

• Discounted gym memberships, free ClassPass at Home, weekly virtual yoga classes

• ‘Bikes for Work’and ‘Electric Car’ scheme

• Up to 60% discount on Harper Collins books

• Access to exclusive events and competitions with exciting brands such as talkSPORT, Virgin Radio UK & The Times. Weekly virtual panel chats with top journalists and celebrities

• Access towellbeing benefitssuch as EAP, physio/massage and counselling

• A generouspensionscheme with employer contributions of up to 5%

• 25 daysholiday, plus bank holidays and up to 4volunteeringdays per year

• Thriving employee networks supporting colleagues to embed and grow, including women in technology, parenting, wellbeing, GenZ, NewsIsOut and faith-oriented groups.

We want to ensure that everyone we meet has the opportunity to perform to their best when applying for a role. Please let us know, at any stage, whether you require any reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, and we will do our best to accommodate.