Principal Technical Architect - FT Specialist and Community

About FT Product & Technology

Here at the Financial Times, gold-standard journalism is just the beginning. 500+-people strong, our Product & Tech team keeps us ahead of the ever-changing digital landscape by delivering cutting-edge products to over one million digital subscribers every day. Our plans for growth rely on a diverse, dedicated and dynamic group of product, tech, delivery and data specialists - everyone’s welcome in this friendly, forward-thinking team. And with entrepreneurial spirit, intelligence and opportunity at every turn, there’s no limit to where your FT career will take you.

Our commitment to diversity and inclusion in the workplace

At the FT, we aim for employees across all regions to have a voice so that diverse perspectives are heard and valued. We believe that a supportive workplace is one where employees feel they can be themselves at work and have the flexibility they need to meet their personal needs. We'll continue to remove barriers for all, and in particular barriers facing employees from underrepresented groups

The Role

This is a new Principal Technical Architect role within our Technology department, responsible for defining and steering the evolution of applications, integrations, cloud platforms, and enterprise data across FT Specialist and Community. The role ensures our technology ecosystem evolves as a coherent, scalable, secure, and sustainable way while providing architectural leadership, governance, and technical direction across multiple engineering teams.

The successful post-holder will work across engineering teams responsible for our digital products, application services, and the integrations with the core platforms and enterprise data domains, including customer, company, licence, content, intelligence products, and live events. They will own the evolution of the application and integration architecture across FT Specialist and Community, defining the target state, principles, and technology roadmaps so that we simplify and scale our technology ecosystem in line with our broader Technology Strategy, ensuring consistency, quality, and reuse across the FT. Success will be measured by simplifying our technology landscape, reducing platform duplication and integration complexity, and improving architectural consistency, engineering delivery, cloud efficiency, and cost optimisation.

Reporting directly to the Technology Director for FT Specialist and Community, this position suits someone who is self-directed, an excellent communicator, and experienced in influencing technical strategy at scale. You will work closely with the technical architects and engineering teams throughout FT.

You’ll play a key role in shaping the future of technology across FT Specialist and Community by:

• Defining the architectural direction for multiple product domains.
• Establishing common patterns that accelerate engineering delivery.
• Simplifying our technology ecosystem through shared capabilities.
• Enabling trusted, governed, and observable data flows.
• Preparing our platforms for AI-enabled products and services.
• Influencing technology decisions across engineering, product, and platform teams.

This position does not have direct line management responsibilities. It is a ‘Principal’ role in the sense that you will be leading software and application architecture in an individual contributor capacity — driving consistency, clarity, and best practice across teams.

Prior experience in application and data architecture, data modelling, or cloud platform design is essential. A broader knowledge of software engineering is highly desirable.

Main Responsibilities

Strategy & Vision

• Own the application architecture strategy for FT Specialist and Community, ensuring it aligns with the wider FT Technology Strategy and future business direction, setting standards, patterns, and policies that promote reuse, reliability, and alignment across domains.
• Develop multi-year application architecture roadmaps, identifying opportunities to simplify the technology ecosystem, reduce technical debt, and improve platform capabilities.
• Shape the evolution of the FT Specialist and Community application development and integrations, ensuring that digital products and services are built and delivered through scalable, well-governed cloud-native platforms and services.
• Define architectural patterns for AI-native applications, intelligent automation, APIs, Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, and agent-based services where appropriate.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and architectural approaches, making strategic recommendations that balance innovation, delivery, operational sustainability, and long-term business value.

Architecture Governance & Standards

• Provide technical leadership for application architecture across the FT Technology ecosystem, ensuring excellence in design, integration, and cloud platform interoperability.
• Establish and lead architecture governance, including design reviews, reference architectures, architectural decision records, and technical standards.
• Define modelling standards, integration patterns, and architectural principles for applications, storage, movement, and consumption in a fully cloud-native environment.
• Ensure architectures meet non-functional requirements, including resilience, performance, observability, security, compliance, and operational excellence.

Architecture Evolution & Modernisation

• Lead the modernisation of legacy applications and integrations, defining pragmatic migration paths towards cloud-native and platform-based architectures.
• Drive platform consolidation and technology rationalisation, reducing duplication through shared services, reusable capabilities, and common integration patterns.
• Ensure seamless integration between domain models and the platforms, enabling consistent, governed, and observable data flows across systems and teams.
• Collaborate with engineering, platform, and product teams to design reusable solutions that support operational, product, and analytical needs and resolve cross-domain technical challenges and trade-offs.

Technical Leadership & Engineering Enablement

• Build trusted relationships across engineering, product, and platform teams, influencing architectural direction through technical leadership, collaboration, and credibility.
• Coach engineering teams and mentor Principal Engineers, fostering architectural thinking, engineering autonomy, and a culture of continuous technical improvement.

Required Knowledge, Skills & Experience:

• Demonstrable experience in a senior technical architecture role, responsible for defining and governing cloud-native applications at scale.
• Deep technical knowledge of public cloud environments (AWS preferred), including hands-on experience designing cloud-native applications and distributed systems.
• Experience with cloud services for data storage, streaming, processing, and metadata management, with a focus on scalable, secure, and cost-effective architectures.
• Strong grounding in software modelling, data integration, and metadata management, with practical experience in domain-driven and event-driven architectures.
• Experience communicating architecture using approaches such as C4, ArchiMate, UML, or Architecture Decision Records (ADRs).
• Solid experience in integration and domain architecture, including designing reusable APIs, events, and domain boundaries.
• Proven experience translating business and feature requirements into application architecture designs, ideally across customer, content, or subscription-oriented businesses.
• Experience balancing architectural direction with pragmatic delivery, making appropriate trade-offs between short-term business priorities and long-term technical sustainability.
• Understanding of software and data governance, privacy, security, and quality principles, and how they apply to distributed cloud environments.
• Familiarity with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and modern engineering practices such as CI/CD, observability, and monitoring in cloud contexts.
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to convey complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Track record of influencing across organisational boundaries, leading through expertise, and aligning teams on long-term architecture and data strategies.

Additional Skills and Experience (Non-essential but Advantageous):

• Background in software engineering, data engineering, and information architecture.
• Experience with publishing and data products, including lifecycle management, discoverability, and user-centric design.
• Experience implementing federated or domain-oriented software models within complex organisations.
• Knowledge of modern data storage technologies, including relational, NoSQL, columnar, and graph databases.
• Experience with supplier management, particularly evaluating SaaS data solutions through competitive assessment or procurement processes.

In Return, We Can Offer You

• Annual bonus scheme
• 25 days paid leave
• 24/7 Employee Assistance Program
• Life Insurance
• Enhanced Parental Leave policy
• Food Allowance
• Multisport Card
• Both in house and external training programs
• Your own training dedicated budget (for conferences, courses etc.)

We currently operate a hybrid model which requires staff to work onsite 50% of the time, subject to role requirements & regular review. While flexible working requests will be considered, not all patterns are suitable for all roles. We believe this balanced approach supports flexibility and protects our culture, making collaboration and communication easier, building stronger relationships and team cohesion, and supporting peer learning. We reserve discretion on reasonable notice to change this approach either generally or for specific individuals or teams.

Our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion

We believe in the power of unique perspectives and want all voices in our organisation to be heard, respected and valued. A supportive workplace is one where employees feel they can be themselves and operate to their full potential. We are committed to removing barriers for everyone, with a focus on addressing those faced by underrepresented groups.

Accessibility

We are a disability confident employer and Valuable 500 signatory.

Please let us know if you require any reasonable adjustments/personalisation as part of the application process or to enable you to attend an interview. If you would like to discuss your requirements or have any questions, email [email protected] and a member of our team will be happy to help.

Further information

At the FT, we embrace innovation and the use of technology and appreciate that individuals may leverage AI tools as part of their job application process. Whilst we are happy for you to use AI to assist with your application, it is essential that all information provided is authentic and accurately represents your skills, experience, and qualifications.

Candidates should be aware that the use of AI throughout the application process may be monitored to ensure a fair and transparent hiring process for all.

Please beware of fraudulent job postings and offers claiming to be from the Financial Times. All legitimate opportunities will direct you to apply through the official Financial Times careers site, and the FT will never ask for financial information, payments, or referrals to third parties during the hiring process. If you have any concerns about the legitimacy of a job posting or suspect any scam activity, please contact [email protected].

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