Head of Architecture

Head of Architecture

Permanent

Manchester Airport / Hybrid (2 days per week onsite)

About CAVU

For airports, for partners, for people. We are CAVU.

At CAVU, our purpose is to find new and better ways to make airport travel seamless and enjoyable for everybody — from the smallest ideas to the biggest transformations. Every day is an opportunity to create better travel experiences.

From our revenue-accelerating single-platform technology, Propel, through to our world-class hospitality venues including 1903 and Escape Lounges, our solutions make travel smoother for passengers and more profitable for our clients and partners.

We know that to bring your best ideas, you need the space to think, the support to grow, and the freedom to be your authentic self. Whether you're working from our offices, from home, in our lounges, or on the road, we provide an environment where you can create, innovate, and help transform airport travel.

Together, we can reach new heights. Together, we are CAVU.

About the role

We're looking for a Head of Architecture to lead the technical direction, architectural strategy and engineering standards across CAVU's technology landscape, with a particular focus on Propel, our market-leading airport travel platform.

This is a senior technical leadership role, responsible for shaping modern, scalable and secure cloud-native solutions that support both current business priorities and future growth. You'll work closely with engineering, product and technology leaders to ensure architecture enables rapid delivery, commercial success and exceptional customer experiences.

Reporting to the Engineering Director, you'll lead a team of architects and technical specialists, providing both strategic direction and technical guidance across multiple disciplines. While this is not a hands-on engineering role, we're looking for someone who remains close enough to modern software development practices to challenge thinking, influence technical decisions and support teams in solving complex problems.

This is an exciting opportunity to help shape the future evolution of Propel as it continues to scale, support new products and integrations, and expand into new markets and airport partners globally.

Key responsibilities

Architecture Strategy & Technical Leadership

• Define and evolve CAVU's architecture strategy, ensuring technology decisions align with business objectives, customer needs and long-term platform scalability.
• Provide technical leadership across cloud and solution architecture, driving the adoption of modern architectural patterns and engineering best practices.

• Lead architecture reviews and technical governance activities, ensuring solutions are scalable, secure, resilient and commercially effective.

• Establish and maintain architectural standards, principles and technology roadmaps across the organisation.

• Champion modern cloud-native approaches and support the ongoing evolution of CAVU's technology platforms.

Platform & Solution Architecture

• Guide the architectural direction of Propel and associated products, ensuring they can scale effectively to support future business growth.

• Work closely with engineering teams to evaluate solution designs, technical approaches and implementation strategies.

• Support the successful delivery of new platform capabilities, integrations and international implementations.

• Drive continuous improvement across system performance, reliability, observability and operational excellence.

• Promote architecture decisions that balance customer experience, technical quality, speed of delivery and cost efficiency.

Leadership & Collaboration

• Lead, coach and develop a multidisciplinary architecture and technical quality team, creating a culture of collaboration, innovation and continuous improvement.

• Build strong relationships across engineering, product and business teams, acting as a trusted technical advisor to senior stakeholders.

• Facilitate technical discussions and architecture forums, helping teams make informed decisions and align around shared objectives.

• Partner with internal and external delivery teams to ensure architectural consistency and high-quality outcomes.

Innovation & Future Technology

• Maintain awareness of emerging technologies, industry trends and architectural approaches that could create value for CAVU and its customers.

• Champion an AI-first mindset where appropriate, exploring opportunities to leverage modern technologies to improve products, platforms and engineering effectiveness.

• Drive conversations around technology innovation, helping shape future platform capabilities and architectural direction.

About you

We're looking for a highly credible technology leader who combines strong architectural expertise with a deep understanding of modern software engineering.

You'll likely have progressed from an engineering, technical leadership or architecture background and be comfortable operating at both strategic and technical levels. You'll enjoy working in fast-paced product and technology environments and be passionate about building scalable platforms that deliver real business value.

You'll also bring:

• Proven experience leading architecture functions within modern technology, SaaS or product-led organisations.

• Strong expertise in cloud-native architecture, ideally within AWS environments.

• Experience designing and governing scalable, distributed and serverless architectures.

• A strong understanding of modern software engineering practices and the ability to engage credibly with development teams.

• Experience working with technologies such as AWS Lambda, Route 53 and wider AWS platform services.

• Knowledge of observability, monitoring and platform reliability approaches, with exposure to tools such as Datadog being advantageous.

• Experience balancing technical excellence with commercial considerations, including scalability, performance and cost optimisation.

• Strong stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence technical and non-technical audiences.

• Experience leading and developing high-performing architecture or technical teams.

• A collaborative leadership style and a passion for continuous improvement.

• Experience within travel, aviation or airport technology is not required.

What's in it for you?

• 25 days holiday, increasing with service (up to 28)
• Option to buy up to 10 extra days + 4 flexible bank holidays
• 10% company pension
• Annual bonus scheme
• On-site gym
• MediCash scheme
• A range of flexible benefits and discounts, including up to 50% off CAVU products such as Escape Lounges and Airport Parking
• Rail and retail discounts
• 2 paid volunteering days per year
• Access to health & wellbeing events, ID&E activities, and learning opportunities
• Formal and informal development options, including mentoring programmes and learning grants
• Enhanced parental leave (T&Cs apply)

Equal Opportunities and Reasonable Adjustments

We’re building something brilliant at CAVU: a diverse team of people who reflect the global customer base we serve. We’re proudly part of MAG, and together we’re on a mission to be number one in our industries — and that takes talent in all its forms.

Whether this is your first role or your next big step, we want to hear from you, even if you don’t think you tick every box. What matters most is what you bring.

We’re proud to be a Disability Confident employer. If you need any adjustments to support your application or interview, just let us know — we’re committed to helping you perform at your best.

Our Colleague Communities play a big part in that journey, including Women’s Network, Embrace (Race & Ethnicity), Fly with Pride (LGBTQIA+), Mind Matters (Mental Health), PACT (Parents & Carers), RespectABILITY (Disability & Neurodiversity), and the CAVU Global ID&E Affinity Group.

Ready to reach new heights?