Technical Architect

We're looking for a talented Technical Architect to help shape the University of Cambridge's digital future. As part of the Enterprise Architecture Team within University Information Services (UIS), you'll turn strategy into secure, operable and cost-effective technical designs used across one of the world's leading universities.

If you enjoy solving complex architectural challenges, influencing technology direction, and helping delivery teams succeed, we'd love to hear from you.

University Information Services (UIS) provides the services, platforms, networks and enterprise applications that support the University's teaching, research and administration. Our systems are used daily by tens of thousands of students, academics and staff. We operate at scale and complexity, with a federated environment that makes architectural clarity essential.

As a Technical Architect, reporting to the Chief Architect, you will:

• Design and assure end-to-end technical solutions that support the University's strategy and improve coherence across our technology estate.
• Define reusable patterns for APIs, integrations and event-driven architectures, helping to reduce duplication and integration complexity across departments.
• Embed security, operability, privacy and cost into designs from the outset, including NFRs, SLOs, threat models, observability and right-sizing.
• Influence strategic decisions, creating clear architectural narratives (C4 models, capability maps, roadmaps, ADRs) that enable senior leaders to make informed choices.
• Lead early technical discovery, including spikes and proofs-of-concept, without becoming a hands-on coder.
• Support modernisation through rationalisation (retire/replace/refactor), cloud migration and the evolution of reference architectures and guardrails.
• Provide matrix leadership for specialists and contractors as needed, helping ensure quality and alignment across initiatives.
• Collaborate widely, working with delivery teams, service owners, infrastructure leads, security specialists and colleagues across the wider University.

We're looking for someone who can bring clarity and confidence to complex technical landscapes, and who thrives in a collaborative, federated environment.

Essential Experience

• Technical or solution architecture across complex, multi-system estates.
• Designing API-led and event-driven integrations.
• Broad understanding across infrastructure, software, data, integration and security.
• Translating business needs into architectural options and executable designs.
• Guiding teams through design decisions, balancing short-term pragmatism with long-term strategy.
• Working knowledge of cloud service models (SaaS, PaaS) and enterprise applications.

Cloud / Platform Depth

Experience in design/assurance with Azure, GCP or AWS, including:

• Container orchestration (AKS / GKE / EKS)
• API management and streaming (REST, GraphQL, Kafka/Event Hubs, Pub/Sub)
• Identity and access (OIDC, OAuth2, SSO, SCIM)
• Network/security architecture
• Observability (logging, tracing, metrics)
• IaC/DevOps (Terraform, Bicep, CI/CD)

Skills and experience

• Exceptional communication and facilitation skills.
• Ability to influence senior stakeholders with clear, option-based narratives.
• Analytical clarity and sound judgement.
• A collaborative, team-first mindset.
• Working in higher education, public-sector or other federated environments.
• FinOps practices and cloud cost optimisation.
• SRE/operability principles, DR/BCP design.
• Familiarity with GDS standards.
• Professional certification in architecture, cloud or systems design. 

We welcome applications from individuals who wish to be considered for part-time working or other flexible working arrangements.

We particularly welcome applications from women and /or candidates from a BME background for this vacancy as they are currently under-represented at this level in our department.

To apply online for this vacancy and to view further information about the role, please click 'Apply' above.

If you are interested in this opportunity and would like to know more, please contact Dr Jamie Thorogood, Chief Architect, at jamie.thorogood@uis.cam.ac.uk.

The University actively supports equality, diversity and inclusion and encourages applications from all sections of society.

Advert information