At AKQA, we believe in the imaginative application of art and science to create beautiful ideas, products and services. With an entrepreneurial and collaborative approach, we design adaptive digital services and applications that capture the imagination, delivering immersive experiences for our clients. 

As a Technical Architect you will be responsible for technical design excellence, facilitating and ownership of strong architectural decisions and their implementation. You will be key to helping guide the team to their common goals which are aligned to our clients’ business objectives.

You will work closely with clients and product owners to validate their needs, understand their requirements, and ensure good collaboration across the team to deliver the most appropriate solution. The Technical Architect is a Tech leader who is inspired by best practice, state-of-the-art techniques and technological innovation across enterprise and consumer applications. Ensuring teams deliver high quality and innovative solutions, leading the way in technology best practices and standards.

You will articulate your ideas to your colleagues effectively whilst also collaborating upon the ideas of others. You will thrive when faced with new challenges, view them as opportunities and constantly look to improve client deliverables. 

ROLE REQUIREMENTS 

• Ability to design and implement Enterprise end-to-end Solutions for Globally distributed, Multi-market and Multi-brand organisations.
• Experience of working collaboratively and within the governance model of enterprise IT teams to achieve a common goal.
• Experience of working in cross-discipline teams and alongside key delivery roles such as Business Analyst, Product Owner and Technical Lead. 
• Ability to analyse, appraise and make recommendations based upon the existing client technology landscape and business ambitions, including key technologies, tooling providers and solutions.
• Ability to convey recommendations clearly via documentation, diagrams, presentations and discussions.
• Lead the development and implementation of technology roadmaps with senior clients and development teams.
• Practices and patterns such as Clean Code, Domain Driven Design and enterprise integration.
• Mentoring, coaching and line management of developers of all levels of experience. 
• Enterprise integration patterns and design.
• Collaborate with creatives to formulate design to tech processes.

IDEAL CANDIDATES SHOULD HAVE

• Multi-market / enterprise grade headless CMS experience, ideally with Contentful. Contentful certification is a plus.
• Experience with headless SaaS product integration, ideally including Algolia.
• Hands-on expertise with AWS including Cloudfront, Lambda, API Gateway and EC2.
• Expansive knowledge of Next.js, React, Typescript.
• Experience with design systems and design to code automation.

TECHNICAL CAPABILITIES & EXPERIENCE

• Extensive Experience of Web, Mobile Application, Platform and Digital Product Development.
• Expansive knowledge of headless SaaS products, specifically Contentful and ideally Algolia.
• Hands-on Cloud Infrastructure experience with AWS.
• Understanding and practical experience with DevOps practices e.g. CI/CD, automation.
• End-to-end automated system experience from code to end product, IaC.
• Proven experience of SSR/CSR rendering, load balancing, containers, Lambdas, APIs, event-driven architecture, databases and logging.
• Experience with hosting and deploying in markets with specific regulatory requirements e.g. China.
• Strong experience with headless CMS architecture considerations such as space orchestration, content model template distribution, environment mappings, content strategy, workflows, roles, permissions and webhooks.
• In-depth content model design for global and localised page generation.
• Frontend architecture experience, specifically around Design System/UI layer integration, code architectural patterns, standards, git flows and PR reviews.
• Expert knowledge of Next.js, React, Typescript and CSS.
• Familiar with considerations for shared libraries such as versioning, deployment and page generation for different regions/locales.
• Backend architecture experience to include API Design, Lambdas, API Gateways, CI/CD and automated tests.
• Techniques to ensure the mitigation of risks and monitoring of resilience in a distributed system.
• Strong understanding of Microservice Architecture and distributed Systems.
• Hands-on development of Serverless services and Integration scripting.
• Design tools, Design Systems, and Design to Code as part of fully integrated Digital Experience platforms is advantageous.

QUALITIES AND CHARACTERISTICS

• Be a champion for product excellence.
• Extensive experience working as a Technical Architect.
• Experience working in a creative and/or agency environment is advantageous.
• Be a coach and motivator who can inspire colleagues and clients with best practices and state-of-the-art techniques.
• Excellent communication and presentation skills.
• Be inspired by emerging technologies to apply relevant learnings to our business and that of our work for clients.
• Acute attention to detail and drive for perfection.
• A practically-minded thought leader whose first priority is delivering excellent work and rich customer experience.

AKQA is an Equal Opportunities Employer, we believe that diversity is vital to AKQA’s ability to provide our clients with the best recommendations and are committed to fostering a varied and inclusive work environment. Your race, colour, ancestry, religion, gender, gender identity, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, or veteran status have no bearing on our hiring decisions. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.