Principal Architect

Job Title: Principal Architect - Modernisation & Transformation

Contract Type: Permanent

Location: Edinburgh OR Alderley Park (Wilmslow)

Working style: Hybrid 50% from home / 50% office based

As a Principal Architect you will be at the forefront of transforming our technology estate while maintaining the stability and trust that our members expect. You will play a key role in modernising our legacy platforms ensuring that architectural decisions are aligned with long-term member value regulatory requirements and responsible digital transformation.

The ideal candidate will have proven experience establishing architectural governance and a thorough understanding of best in breed technology options and vendors. You will have extensive experience working across complex matrix organisations and will be hungry to continually improve and adapt in a fast-paced environment.

The Principal Architect will be aligned to business areas and Technology Platforms across Pensions Protection Long Term Savings Long Standing Customers Infrastructure and Cloud Technologies and Operational Data

If you are passionate about cloud technologies and want to make a real impact within a forward-thinking company we want to hear from you. Come on board and help us shape the future of financial services.

Key Responsibilities:

• Architecture Leadership: Define and drive the evolution of our technology estate balancing long-term modernisation with immediate business needs.
• Monolith to Microservices Transition: Assess and decompose legacy monolithic applications applying Domain-Driven Design (DDD) event-driven architectures and modern architectural patterns to enable a transition to microservices-based solutions.
• Sustainable Cloud Adoption: Define and execute a pragmatic modernisation strategy ensuring a responsible transition from legacy mainframe-based systems to cloud-native scalable architectures (Microsoft Azure and AWS currently). Lead the transition of on-premises workloads to the Cloud leveraging appropriate migration patterns (e.g. rehost refactor rearchitect).
• Data and Integration driven: Consider integration opportunities and approaches adopting event-driven architectures APIs and messaging patterns to improve interoperability across platforms.
• Architecture Standards & Governance: Establish clear architectural guardrails that balance innovation with risk mitigation. Working with the leadership and peers to enforce frameworks guardrails and best practices to ensure consistency across domains.
• Collaboration & Coaching: Work closely with engineering teams to translate architecture into deployable solutions educating colleagues and stakeholders.
• Stakeholder Engagement: Partner with business and Technology leadership risk & compliance teams to align technical roadmaps with organisational priorities to ensure that modernization efforts are business-aligned and value-driven.
• Member-Focused Architecture: Ensure that architectural decisions support operational resilience regulatory compliance and long-term member benefits.
• Legacy & Modern Integration: Guide the organisation through the evolution from monolithic applications towards modern API-led event-driven architectures.

What you will bring to the role:

• Proven experience in enterprise or solution architecture within regulated industries preferably financial services pensions or protection.
• Deep knowledge of mainframe modernization and migration strategies.
• Expertise in cloud architectures (Microsoft Azure AWS GCP) including compute storage distribution and orchestration
• Strong understanding of microservices architectures domain-driven design event-driven systems and API-led integration.
• Knowledge of architectural frameworks (TOGAF Zachman C4 modelling).
• Experience in defining and implementing architecture governance in complex environments.
• Excellent communication skills able to lead business and technical discussions effectively.

About Royal London

Were the UKs largest mutual life pensions and investment company offering protection long-term savings and asset management products and services.

OurPeople Promiseto our colleagues is that we will all work somewhere inclusive responsible enjoyable and fulfilling. This is underpinned by our Spirit of Royal London values; Empowered Trustworthy Collaborate Achieve.

Weve always been proud to reward employees by offering great workplace benefits such as 28 days annual leave in addition to bank holidays an up to 14% employer matching pension scheme and private medical insurance. You can see all our benefits here -Our Benefits

Inclusion diversity and belonging

Were anInclusiveemployer. We celebrate and value different backgrounds and cultures across Royal London. Our diverse people and perspectives give us a range of skills which are recognised and respected whatever their background.