Software Architect - News UK

We are News UK Technology: using technology to innovate and lead the global conversation on the future of media and storytelling. We keep people at the heart of our business through value-driven and inclusive practices enabling our staff to grow and thrive. As such, we are proud members of Tech Talent Charter UK with 34% of our Tech roles filled by gender minorities. News UK Tech is an award-winning team, winning Team of the Year at the UK Business and Innovation Awards, 2023.

Architecture Team: We play a pivotal role in shaping the technological landscape of our enterprise while ensuring efficiency, security, and scalability across all engineering endeavours. 

We aim to build the best technology environment to set up our teams for success. Our software architecture team collaborates closely with business, product, and platform teams to drive informed decision-making that aligns with our overarching enterprise goals. With a primary focus on simplification and optimisation, this team leads strategic initiatives to streamline our technological infrastructure. By identifying and eliminating redundancies, unnecessary software, and services, they pave the way for accelerated innovation and agility in the future. 

Your Role: As a Software Architect, you will be a technology expert, guiding the technical direction and ensuring the robustness of our software systems. You will be defining and enforcing technology standards as well as communicating architecture decisions and strategies to non-technical stakeholders. Your contribution will be critical in fostering a culture of technology excellence and continuous improvement.

Day to day you can expect a mixture of responsibilities.

Define and maintain technology standards:

• Create, review and update internal RFC documentation.

• Provide feedback on Architecture Decision Records.

• Participate in standards working groups across the organisation.

• Create architectural blueprints to guide the development and implementation.

Assist with technical design:

• Work closely with product managers, business analysts, and other stakeholders to translate requirements into technical solutions.

• Provide recommendations to product and technical teams, assisting with documentation and implementation guidelines.

• Ensure that the architecture supports scalability, performance, security, and maintainability.

Evaluate new platforms, tools and approaches:

• Stay up to date with emerging technologies, standards and industry trends.

• Evaluate and recommend new tools and practices.

• Provide technical expertise for new solutions proposed by other department representatives.

Promote a culture of innovation and  technology excellence across the delivery teams:

• Host and present on Architecture Open Hour, Engineering All Hands,  Show and Tell and other internal technology events.

• Participate in conferences and training our partners organise and distribute the learnings across the teams.

• Maintain relationships with engineering leaders and advocate and implement continuous improvement practices.

Ensure compliance and efficiency across technology estate:

• Maintain and improve discovery tools and the application knowledge base.

• Work with the Cybersecurity Team to improve our security posture.

• Provide insights and reports from monitoring, FinOps and engineering productivity platforms.

• Assess the technical quality of deployed applications, provide recommendations and assist engineers in improving their implementations

The experience and skills we are looking for:

• Strong technical skills with software architecture and infrastructure expertise, demonstrated by implementing effective, efficient and scalable technology solutions.

• Analytical and problem-solving skills, ability to work through complex problems involving multiple stakeholders, and ability to identify constraints and tradeoffs.

• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, capable of articulating technical concepts to engineers and non-technical audiences.

• Knowledge of design principles and architectural patterns, with emphasis on scalability and performance, content distribution, API design and caching strategies.

• Proficiency in our technology stacks—AWS and GCP cloud—with specific expertise in CloudFront, EKS, Lambda, SNS/SQS, S3, EC2 DynamoDB, and Aurora. Knowledge of TypeScript/Javascript, Node.js, Java, and Python programming languages. Knowledge of the WordPress platform.

• Practising DevOps approach, Terraform and CI/CD pipelines.

• Understanding of cybersecurity space. Deep knowledge of product security principles and experience in building secure software.

• Experience in Media and Publishing industries and challenges specific to those domains.

If you think you have what it takes but don’t tick every requirement on the list, please do apply. We recognise that considering someone’s potential and their experience is a great way to hire. We want to hear from people who have a passion for learning and developing.

We are News UK: One of the leading media businesses in the UK and Ireland.  Our newsbrands include The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun, The Sun on Sunday and The TLS. Our national broadcast brands include talkSPORT, Times Radio, TalkTV and Virgin Radio UK, and we have market-leading local radio stations across Ireland. Our world-famous brands provide news, analysis, opinion and entertainment to almost 40 million people each month. Spanning print and pixel, audio and video, events and experiences, our multiplatform brands are home to a plurality of opinion, representing the diverse communities we serve. News UK is wholly owned by News Corp.

Life at News: Driven by passion, guided by principles and acting with purpose. We represent, reflect and reach the nation, telling the stories that matter. We inform our audiences so that they can make decisions based on trusted information.

To do this, we believe our employees must represent different backgrounds, perspectives and experiences. We strive to maximise and encourage every individual’s potential and ensure everyone feels valued. We support this through our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Strategy, which focuses on three main priorities - attracting talent from a wider, more representative pool, developing equity programmes to drive better representation in our leadership, and ensuring diversity and inclusivity in our workforce as well as the journalism and content we produce. We also currently have 12 employee led networks and groups that support our strategy and connect like minded employees socially.

Benefits:

Some of our benefits include:

• Maternity leave up to 18 weeks full basic salary & paternity leave up to 2 weeks

• Wide range of training available, plus full LinkedIn Learning access

• Private medical insurance including coverage for pre-existing conditions

• Discounted gym memberships, free ClassPass at Home, weekly virtual yoga classes

• ‘Bikes for Work’ and ‘Electric Car’ scheme

• Up to 60% discount on Harper Collins books

• Access to exclusive events and competitions with exciting brands such as talkSPORT, Virgin Radio UK & The Times. Weekly virtual panel chats with top journalists and celebrities

• Access to wellbeing benefits such as EAP, physio/massage and counselling

• A generous pension scheme with employer contributions of up to 5%

• 25 days holiday, plus bank holidays and up to 4 volunteering days per year

• Thriving employee networks supporting colleagues to embed and grow, including women in technology, parenting, wellbeing, GenZ, NewsIsOut and faith-oriented groups. 

We want to ensure that everyone we meet has the opportunity to perform to their best when applying for a role. Please let us know, at any stage, whether you require any reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, and we will do our best to accommodate.