My client is looking for an experienced mobile architect to join their team on an initial 8 week piece of work with a good possibility to extend. This is a hybrid role and is outside of IR35.
Able to reconstruct architecture of large existing systems from code, interviews and incomplete artefacts - demonstrable, with examples; Fluency in structured modelling approach (C4, arc42, UML, ADRs). Documentation-as-code tooling, diagramming tools, Confluence/Miro.
Defining architecture characteristics and quality attributes, and assessing a system against them.
Platform bias: iOS depth expected. Must be conversant enough in Android to challenge and review docs and assessment findings.
iOS (primary depth)
- Swift, UIKit and SwiftUI in large production apps; understands the realities of a mixed UIKit/SwiftUI estate
- Modularisation at scale: SPM, Xcode workspaces, Tuist/XcodeGen, XCFrameworks, module boundary and dependency management
- Hands-on experience of architectural patterns in large production apps (MVVM, VIPER, TCA, Clean-style layering), and the ability to identify which one a codebase follows;
- Build, signing and distribution mechanics; profiling and performance analysis
Android (working knowledge)
- Kotlin, Jetpack Compose, Gradle multi-module builds: enough to read, question and validate, not necessarily to write
Backend, API and integration
- Mobile-to-backend integration patterns: BFF, API gateway, REST/GraphQL/gRPC, versioning and contract management
- Identity and authorisation: OAuth 2.0, OIDC, token lifecycle, session management, step-up authentication; FAPI and Open Banking awareness
- Understanding of how a bank's mobile app sits on top of core banking, payments and legacy estates, including mainframe-fronted services
Essential non-technical skills
- Executive stakeholder management: can hold a room with CTO-level stakeholders, present findings without softening them or turning them into an accusation
- Elicitation under resistance - gets useful answers from people who suspect they are being assessed
- Written clarity for mixed audiences
- Scope discipline: recognizes rabbit holes early and closes them protecting a fixed-price approach
- Independent judgement: willing to state a conclusion on partial evidence, and to label clearly where confidence is low
- Pace: comfortable producing a defensible first cut in week two for discussion and refining, rather than perfecting until week seven
- Fluent professional English, spoken and written
Nice to have
- Prior delivery inside a UK or EU retail bank, or comparably regulated environment
- Experience of a mobile platform modernisation or re-platforming programme, in either direction
- Cross-platform estates: Kotlin Multiplatform, React Native, hybrid/webview components
- Consultancy background; experience scoping and defending fixed-price work
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