Lead Platform Architect

THE ROLE

As a Platform Architect within Smart Pension, you will work with multiple teams to make a worldwide difference!

The Platform Architecture team helps create a strategy and direction to support the ever-scaling Keystone platform changing the entire industry of Pensions. Taking on challenges from business features, and new technologies to security, breaking down complex problems and collaborating on solutions, the team provides end-to-end support with the delivery of the roadmap.

The Lead Platform Architect will report to our Director of Platform Architecture and work within a growing Platform Architecture team to define the future vision of the Smart Pension platform.

WHAT YOU WLL DO

• Works closely with platform product managers, technical architects and principals, and security to develop roadmaps
• Understanding business context
• Working with stakeholders to achieve the best technical approaches for projects
• Own the strategy & vision for the architecture of the platform, ensuring vision for scale & enabling future expansion from an architectural point of view
• Identifying & predicting platform technical needs to reduce potential risks, helping business to prioritise critical items ahead of time
• Translating business needs into technical priorities & ensuring these are evaluated and then placed on the roadmap in a timely manner
• Supporting the pre-discovery phase, working with the solutions team to analyse & research prospective projects
• Leading the discovery phase & helping throughout the lifecycle of relevant initiatives in delivery with technical architects & principals
• Assessing opportunities from new technologies that might benefit Keystone
• Helps with direction, guidance and definition of tech architecture to support business strategy.
• Translate complex technical subjects into actionable recommendations.
• Ensuring technical items from engineers & security are thoroughly researched and actioned (roadmap or rejected)
• Ownership of Platform level technical documentation
• Overseeing & planning the scalability projects (tests or others) in due time
• Staying on top of trends in the industry
• Understanding, evaluating & communicating the cost of scale
• Expert knowledge of platform map (services & how they communicate)

Requirements

WHO WE ARE LOOKING FOR

We know it can be a challenge to tick every box, but please do not be put off from applying if you do not have every single one of the following skills:

• Significant commercial experience with Ruby, working in a Ruby on rails environment
• If Ruby has not been the core technology in your career but you have significant commercial experience in other languages such as Python, still get in touch – we'll chat about how much of that knowledge is transferable.
• Significant experience working with groups of engineers; helping others understand and implement, not building the solution yourself. This could be through managing a team, as a tech lead, or as a senior engineer who had ownership of a project.
• Deep understanding of object-oriented programming.
• Desire to work with Domain Driven Design.
• Strong knowledge of databases.
• Deep understanding of design patterns.
• Significant experience with modern technologies such as AWS, Kubernetes, Kafka, Vault etc
• Experience working with one or more programming languages e.g. Ruby, Python, Go etc.
• Ability to handle & prioritise multiple projects at the same time.
• You are excited about solving large-scale code & infrastructure problems
• Most importantly, a desire to learn, grow, work with a fantastic team and deliver a platform.

WHO WE ARE

Smart is a modern fintech company with a goal to be the world's premier technology company that specialises in retirement. We are proud to recruit from all industries to bring a strong mixture of skills together, creating an award winning platform and service.

Using our people focussed cloud-native technology, we build digital products to help people around the world, save for retirement. We’ve gone from a small start-up to a global industry leader with over a billion pounds in assets under management.

Sustainability is a priority across all levels at Smart. Our Sustainability team works across the organisation and with colleagues across every area to maximise Smart’s positive impact.

See what our colleagues have said about working at Smart on the Great Place To Work website, Linkedin Life and Glassdoor.

Benefits

WHAT YOU WILL GET

At Smart, one of the 8 principles we work to is “We want happy and good people in our team”.
We created a list of benefits that helps us achieve this goal: We offer competitive salaries, great colleagues and excellent benefits, including:

• 25 days holiday per year that increases with length of service.
• £500 annual training budget to spend on your professional development
• Extensive private Health care including dental, eyecare and EAP
• Enhanced sick leave (three months pay per year)
• Death in service with Unum (4 x base salary)
• Enhanced maternity and paternity (maternity – 6 months fully paid/paternity – 3 weeks fully paid)
• Five-week sabbatical after five years of employment
• In office wellbeing such as manicures, massages and barbers. In addition we serve lunch, breakfasts and social drinks weekly.

• Smart employees also enjoy a 50% discount on orders from our sister company Arena Flowers, Britain's most ethical florist. They offer unique hand-tied bouquets, luxury flowers, letterbox flowers, plants and gifts to spend on friends and loved ones or even for yourself.

Visit our careers page at www.smart.co/careers to find our Recruitment Data Policy.

Please click on the link if you have any questions about how we store your data or to know your rights.

We’re excited for you to make Smart Pension an even more awesome place to work!