Lead Architect

Job Title: Lead Architect / Founding Engineering Hire

Department: Technology
Reports To: CTO

Location: London UK (Hybrid: 3 Days in Office)
Employment Type: 12 month fixed-term contract

About i-media

i-media is an intelligent motoring media network powered by data insights and pioneering technology. We offer advertisers access to an attractive media-starved audience via full-motion DOOH experiential and in-app advertising solutions. A multi-layered communication platform delivering both broadcast and targeted audiences through the intelligent use of data and analytics i-media is on a mission to digitise and redefine how brands connect with on-the-go motorists.

Role Overview

We are seeking a Lead Architect to join a growth-stage PE-backed business as our first in-house engineering hire. This is a pivotal role with end-to-end accountability for stabilising rationalising and evolving an in-flight data platform that underpins our core commercial product.

You will work in close partnership with the CTO to define the technical direction of the platform make critical build vs buy decisions and establish the architectural foundations required to scale the product and bring engineering fully in-house over time.

This role blends hands-on technical leadership with strategic architecture ownership and is expected to evolve into a broader engineering leadership position as the business scales.

Key Responsibilities

Platform & Architecture Ownership

• Take ownership of an existing in-flight data platform and rationalise the current architecture addressing technical debt and structural risks.
• Define and document a 612 month target-state architecture aligned to product growth commercial priorities and PE-backed scale expectations.
• Own architectural integrity across scalability reliability performance and maintainability.

Technical Strategy & Decision-Making

• Lead and document:
  • Build vs buy decisions
  • Data model and integration philosophy
  • Core product technology stack
  • Security posture in collaboration with IT / cyber partners
• Act as the technical decision-maker for the product balancing speed cost risk and long-term scalability.

Cloud Data & DevOps Ownership

• Full ownership of:
  • Cloud account structure and environment design
  • Cost strategy monitoring and optimisation
  • CI/CD pipelines deployment standards and release processes
• Ensure engineering best practice across infrastructure data pipelines and deployment workflows.

Collaboration & Leadership

• Act as the primary technical counterpart to the CTO translating strategy into executable technical plans and ensuring clarity across the wider business.
• Support the CTO in establishing engineering hiring standards role profiles and future team structure.
• Over time contribute to building and leading the internal engineering function.

Core Technology Stack (Current)

Ownership and evolution required across:

• Snowflake primary data platform for new product
• AWS including Lambda S3 Glue RDS IAM VPC
• Infrastructure as Code Terraform
• CI/CD GitLab
• Secrets & Monitoring AWS native tooling

Skills & Experience

Essential

• Proven experience as a Lead Architect Principal Engineer or Senior Engineering Lead in a data-heavy cloud-native environment.
• Strong hands-on expertise with modern data platforms ideally including Snowflake and AWS.
• Experience taking ownership of existing platforms stabilising architecture and defining future-state designs.
• Deep understanding of cloud cost management scalability and operational trade-offs.
• Comfort operating as a founding or early engineering hire in a fast-growth ambiguous environment.

Desirable

• Experience in PE-backed scale-up or transformation environments.
• Exposure to media data advertising or OOH-adjacent platforms.
• Previous involvement in building engineering teams from first hire onwards.

Attributes & Ways of Working

• Pragmatic commercially aware and outcome-focused.
• Comfortable balancing hands-on delivery with architectural leadership.
• Clear communicator able to bridge technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Strong bias towards simplicity resilience and long-term maintainability.

What We Offer:

• Competitive salary with benefits package
• Workplace pension
• Monthly company socials
• Healthcare Cash Plan
• Cycle2Work Scheme
• Enhanced holiday allowance
• Free monthly 1-to-1 therapy sessions
• Gym contribution
• Hybrid working (3 days in the office)
• Collaborative innovative work environment
• Opportunities for growth and learning

Equal Opportunities:
Were committed to building an inclusive workplace and welcome applications from all backgrounds. Diversity drives innovation and we do not discriminate based on race gender age disability religion or sexual orientation.

Data Privacy:
By applying you consent to i-media processing your personal data for recruitment purposes in line with UK GDPR regulations.

Required Experience:

Senior Manager