Change your career, change lives
The Open University is the UK’s largest university, a world leader in flexible part-time education combining a mission to widen access to higher education with research excellence, transforming lives through education. Find out more about us and our mission by watching this short video (you will be taken to YouTube by clicking this link).
About the Role
As a Group Architect, you will be a technical leader and a problem solver, with a “can-do” attitude, tackling complex technical challenges and driving solutions through effective team collaboration. Working with multiple product teams, you will define the target architecture for the entire domain – including the business, application, data, infrastructure, components and the cost.
You will support continuous conversational architecture governance by collaborating with many product teams within the domain to ensure that they understand the target architecture and that all technology changes in the domain are aligned to University strategy, policies and standards, as well as being aware of how new trends could help the teams solve challenging problems more effectively. You will be an active member of the wider architecture profession, mentoring and managing others in the support of shared learning.
Key Responsibilities
- Work closely with software developers, IT operations, and other stakeholders to understand their requirements and translate them into effective cloud solutions. Provide technical leadership and mentorship to engineering teams.
- Contribute to the definition and execution of OU technology strategies, within the domain and in other areas as needed. Make decisions around the technology landscape in a collaborative manner with teams inside the domain and across the wider University.
- Co-create and document the target architecture, reference architectures, policies and standards – sharing these with teams to support faster delivery of features whilst meeting expectations around Security, Stability, Scalability, Speed and Spend.
- Act as an advocate for continuous conversational architecture governance– ensuring that solutions are aligned to strategy, policy, standards.
- Support the team in balancing the tension between build, run and improve – managing key metrics and ensuring that compromises are understood and documented, with mitigations included in the overall product roadmap.
- Keep up to date with trends in Higher Education, technology, architecture and engineering - advocating an attitude to be open to new ways of working which could improve productivity and delivery.
- Be a trusted advisor to the Head of Enterprise Architecture, the Head of Engineering for the domain and across the wider University, and in the development of the architecture profession.
- Support the re-use and availability of trusted data, through use of approved integration and data sharing tools, in order to support the OU in making good decisions.
- Participate in show and tell sessions, and other activities to share successes with others to celebrate what the team has achieved and enable other teams within the domain or across Digital Services and the University to learn from it.
- Be an active member of the OU architecture profession, supporting other architects and contributing to overall development and knowledge of all architects.
About You
Essential:
- Experience as a domain or solutions architect including cloud solutions using Azure and AWS, and integration technologies.
- A track record in defining strategy, policies and standards, encompassing MACH and event driven architecture.
- Experience in migrating on-premise solutions to Azure, understanding the cost and performance of the solution and how this changes in the new architecture.
- Experience of the shift towards a DevOps, CI, CD culture and practices (e.g. automation) to increase flow, frequent feedback and ongoing learning and to support the shared success of achieving team and domain outcomes
- An understanding of the role of SaaS solutions from suppliers such as SAP and Salesforce, and how they contribute to a heterogenous landscape alongside custom solutions to support competitive advantage.
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills, to suit a variety of stakeholders with varying degrees of technical expertise.
- An appreciation of the role of implementation partners and 3rd party support teams.
- An understanding of the UK Higher Education sector, key trends and forces and how these affect a University.
- Experience in matrix management across product teams and within a profession.
- An understanding of how architects can support multi-disciplinary teams working in an agile manner to achieve constant improvement in outcomes.
- Awareness of architecture frameworks and patterns and how they support the development and maintenance of software
- Strong organisational skills and a logical mindset, to support effective and expedient decision making.
Desirable:
- Experience working with diverse, geographically distributed teams, both onshore and offshore, utilising a variety of technologies to maintain a digitally connected environment.
Support with your application
If you have any questions, or need support or adjustments relating to your application, the recruitment process, or the role, please contact us on 01908 541111 or email careers@open.ac.uk quoting the advert reference number.
What's in it for you?
At The Open University, we offer a range of benefits to recognise and reward great work, alongside policies and flexible working that contribute towards a great work life balance. Get all the details of what benefits we offer by visiting our Staff Benefits page (clicking this link will open a new window).
Flexible working
We are open to discussions about flexible working. Whether it’s a job share, part time, compressed hours or another working arrangement. Please reach out to us to discuss what works best for you.
It is anticipated that a hybrid working pattern can be adopted for this role, where the successful candidate can work from home and the office. However, as this role is contractually aligned to our Milton Keynes office it is expected that some attendance in the office will be required when necessary and in response to business needs. We’d expect this to be on average 1-2 times per week.
Next steps in the Recruitment process
Following the initial review of applications submitted for this role, we will be in contact with some candidates to conduct an online screening call. The next stage in the process, should you be shortlisted, will be a face-to-face interview that will take place on-site at our Milton Keynes campus. We anticipate that these interviews will take place during the week commencing 20 October 2025.
Early closing date notification
We may close this job advert earlier than the published closing date where a satisfactory number of applications are received. We would therefore encourage early applications.
How to apply
To apply for this role please submit the following documents:
- CV
- A personal statement of up to 1000 words. You should set out in your statement why you are interested in the role and provide examples of where your skills and experience meet the required competencies for this role as detailed in the job description
You can view your progress and application communications when you are logged into our recruitment system. Please check your spam/junk folders if you do not receive associated email updates.
