Architect

About the role
Moorepay is transforming. We are a trusted leader in UK Payroll and HR solutions, but we aren't resting on our history. We are embarking on a major digital transformation to redefine how businesses manage their most important asset: their people.

As the Principal Software Solutions Architect, you'l l be the technical authority responsible for defining, governing, and evolving the end-to-end architecture of our "AI First " platform, ensuring architectural consistency, secure-by-design principles, and long-term scalability across all engineering squads. Working closely with the Engineering Manager , Cloud & Platform Engineering Lead , and Product leadership , this role shapes our architectural strategy, drives technical excellence, and provides deep guidance to multiple autonomous squads as we scale towards high-performing, cloud-native teams. The Architect balances hands-on solution design, strategic planning, technical oversight, and stakeholder collaboration to keep the platform robust, secure, and ready for future growth.

Why this role matters:

This role defines the architectural backbone that enables the entire engineering organisation to scale effectively. As we transition to multiple autonomous squads, you will ensure our systems remain leading edge, secure, resilient, and consistent enabling rapid product delivery while maintaining high standards of engineering excellence.

You will leave an enduring impact on the platform's foundations, influencing everything from service boundaries to reliability strategies and cloud platform design.

This is a full time, permanent role working on a hybrid basis with 3 days per week in Manchester.

Key Responsibilities

Team Leadership & Scaling

• Define and maintain the technical architecture vision and roadmap across all squads.
• Ensure alignment of architecture with business goals, engineering strategy, and long-term scalability.
• Drive system-wide architectural decisions, providing clear technical direction for squads.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and propose solutions that improve scalability, performance, and developer productivity.
• Mentor senior engineers and influence technical leaders across the organisation.

Secure-by-Design & Compliance

• Embed secure-by-design principles into architectural decisions.
• Ensure threat modelling is performed for new features and major changes.
• Champion secure coding standards and integration of security testing into the delivery pipeline.
• Collaborate with security and compliance stakeholders to ensure solutions meet regulatory and governance requirements.
• Promote design patterns that minimise risk across distributed systems.

Solution Design & Governance

• Own the end-to-end architectural design for major platform components and new product capabilities, with a focus on AI First.
• Work closely with Engineering Manager and Engineering Team Leads to ensure solutions are consistent, secure, and scalable.
• Lead architecture reviews and ensure adherence to design standards, technical patterns, and best practices.
• Produce solution blueprints, reference architectures, and technical documentation.
• Validate that all solutions support operational excellence, reliability, and maintainability.

Cloud, Infrastructure, and Platform Architecture

• Define scalable service-based architectures leveraging cloud-native patterns.
• Work with the Lead SRE to ensure architectural designs account for:
• Observability (metrics, logs, tracing)
• Reliability (SLIs, SLOs, failover)
• CI/CD automation
• Infrastructure as code and environment design
• Drive optimisation of compute, storage, and network resources across cloud platforms (Azure/AWS).

Engineering Collaboration & Technical Enablement

• Partner with Engineering Manager to ensure squads have clear architectural guidance.
• Support teams in breaking down complex technical problems into executable, scalable solutions.
• Provide architectural input into backlog refinement, release planning, and prioritisation.
• Act as the primary facilitator for cross-team architectural decision-making.
• Communicate architectural decisions, trade-offs, and risks to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Continuous Improvement & Technology Standards

• Define and maintain engineering standards, reusable patterns, and architectural principles.
• Champion continuous improvement across code quality, security, performance, and operational readiness.
• Foster a culture of technical excellence, experimentation, and innovation.

Skills & experience

Essential:

• Proven experience as a Principal Architect, Solutions Architect, or Senior Engineer leading architectural decisions in complex systems.
• Strong understanding of AI technologies such as agents and models for both accelerated design & delivery as well as delivery of product capabilities.
• Strong background in cloud-native architectures (microservices, event-driven, distributed systems).
• Deep understanding of secure-by-design principles, threat modelling, cryptography basics, and modern security practices.
• Experience with API design, integration patterns, and domain-driven design (DDD) and Event Driven Design.
• Ability to influence without authority and collaborate effectively across engineering, SRE, product, and leadership teams.
• Exceptional communication skills, capable of simplifying complex technical topics for diverse stakeholders.
• Extensive experience with modern programming platforms and frameworks (e.g., Node.js, C# .NET, React).
• Strong grounding in cloud platforms (AWS/Azure), including networking, identity, observability, and cost optimisation.

Desirable:

• Experience designing solutions in regulated or compliance-driven industries.
• Background in DevOps, platform engineering, or SRE practices.
• Experience scaling architectures to support high-growth environments.
• Certification in cloud or architecture frameworks (AWS SA Pro, Azure Architect Expert, TOGAF, etc.).

Benefits & culture

Part of the Zellis Group, Moorepay is a team of over 500 friendly professionals across four offices in Swinton (Manchester), Sheffield, Birmingham and Kochi (India). We're passionate about making Moorepay a fantastic place to work for every single one of our colleagues. The average length of service at Moorepay is 12 years, which speaks for itself!

To help make Moorepay such a great place to work, we focus on three things in our company culture: mental health support, maintaining a healthy work/life balance, and equal opportunities and inclusion for all.

Here's what you'll gain if you join our team:

• A career packed with opportunity, in a stable and growing company.
• A comprehensive programme of learning and development.
• Competitive base salary and annual bonus.
• 25 days annual leave, with the opportunity to buy more. You'll even get your birthday off as well!
• Private medical insurance.
• Life assurance 4x salary.
• Enhanced pension with up to 8.5% employer contributions.
• A huge range of additional flexible benefits across financial & personal wellbeing, lifestyle & leisure.