Job Introduction
BPP Education is entering a new phase of its growth and evolution, attracting thousands more students each year and expanding into new verticals and new markets globally. The BPP Product & Technology (P&T) organisation is evolving rapidly, and driving transformation of its platforms, digital products and experiences, in order to help BPP Education scale and meet the growth of the business in the coming years.
We’re looking for a Principal Software Architect to help us design and build our digital platforms, products and user experiences, to deliver scalable, secure and performant experiences that delight and engage learners during their time studying with BPP and beyond, throughout their working lives.
We have recently launched our BPP Product & Technology blog on Medium so to hear more about us and what is going on please do check it out - https://medium.com/bpp-technology`
What if you read the description and don't meet every single requirement? We encourage you to apply anyway - we value diverse backgrounds and are committed to inclusivity!
Why work for BPP?
It is a great time to join BPP as we have enjoyed a sustained period of growth, offering a wealth of opportunities to our staff, students and clients. There are many more great reasons to join BPP such as:
- Brilliantly, you can study any of BPP’s courses for free – be it a professional qualification or full degree.
- With hybrid working available, you’ll be able to split your time between one of our centres and wherever you choose to call home.
- We also provide a generous annual leave entitlement of 30 days, and there’s a rewards package that includes retail discounts, Group Personal Pension Plan, dedicated private healthcare and dental plans that offer additional assurance to look after you and your family.
What you’ll be doing
As a Principal Software Architect, you will report to the Head of Architecture & SRE, and you will help design and build scalable, performant and secure digital products at BPP as well as managing a small number of software architects. Collaborating closely with your peers in Engineering, Product, Design, Data, Security & SRE, you will help transform BPP Education to become more customer centred, design and data informed, to build products that meet and exceed our users’ needs across our education ecosystem.
- Define and evolve architecture at both the enterprise and solution levels, ensuring alignment with business objectives and overarching technical strategy.
- Tailor architectural characteristics like performance, scalability, and security to each use-case, making trade-offs where appropriate, e.g., favouring simplicity for faster time-to-market.
- Manage and mentor a team of software architects, fostering their growth and development.
- Refine and uphold our architectural principles while providing governance and oversight to ensure alignment across engineering teams.
- Work alongside your peers to provide the right architectural governance and guidance to the engineering teams.
- Collaborate closely with principal engineers to design and validate lower-level technical Architecture.
- Write clean, efficient and well documented code that adheres to our coding standards and practices.
- Participate in code reviews to ensure code quality and maintainability.
- Create high-quality architecture documentation, including various models, such as UML, ERDs, C4-level diagrams, and ADRs, to enable clear communication across teams.
- Driving continuous technical improvement through the analysis of observability metrics and user feedback.
- Be up-to-date with industry best practices, new technologies, and emerging trends in order to drive innovation
Skills, experience & qualifications required - Essential
- Experience as a solution or technical architect, underpinned by a strong engineering background at a senior or principal level, with at least 10 years of overall experience.
- The ability to translate product and business goals into clear technical strategies and system architectures.
- Proven experience designing and delivering architectures in AWS (preferred), Azure, or GCP.
- Extensive knowledge and practical application of broad architectural patterns such as Event-Driven Architecture (EDA), Microservices, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), n-Tier and Domain Driven Design (DDD).
- Proven experience with enterprise integration and async communication patterns, including REST APIs, GraphQL, gRPC, and WebSockets.
- Familiarity with modern front-end technologies and architecture, such as Next.js.
- Strong experience with modern CI/CD processes, Agile methodologies, and related tooling.
- A passion for software architecture and have a high interest in keeping up with current trends and standard practices in your areas of expertise.
- Hands-on experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC), particularly Terraform.
- Experience in large-scale CRM or ERP migrations, implementations, or initiatives desirable.
- Proven experience managing software engineers / architects.
- Strong communication and influencing skills, with a passion for sharing your knowledge, mentoring others and helping them grow.
- Comfortable showcasing your expertise by speaking at both internal and external conferences or technical forums.
- Relevant certifications, such as TOGAF, SAFe, or cloud architect certifications like AWS Certified Solutions Architect (Associate or Professional) all desirable
Pre-employment Checks
- DBS Check – Basic
BPP actively promotes equality of opportunity for all with the right mix of talent, skills and potential, and welcomes applications from a wide range of candidates. BPP will select candidates for interview based on their skills, qualifications and experience. Please note that for those posts that are exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, the successful candidate will be required to undertake a DBS check in addition to BPP undertaking any necessary online searches. This is deemed appropriate and necessary from a safeguarding perspective, and in line with BPP’s safer recruitment practices.
BPP are a Disability Confident employer so if you need any reasonable adjustments for the interview process, please just let us know!
