Technical Solutions Architect

We're recruiting for an experienced Technical Solution Architect to join our Technology team here at Penguin. This role is offered on a permanent basis with hybrid working from our office in Embassy Gardens, London.  

This is a senior architecture role with a strong engineering focus. You’ll work to shape and assure our integration architecture, turning wider technology strategy into practical, implementable patterns that our engineering teams can use with confidence. 

A key focus of the role will be supporting the modernisation of our integration landscape, as we move away from hundreds of point-to-point and file-based integrations towards a more governed platform of reusable business-domain services, REST APIs, business events and Model Context Protocol (MCP) interfaces on Azure. 

You’ll work closely with engineering teams to guide this transition incrementally, helping us to reduce complexity, improve resilience and make change easier, whilst ensuring the stability and continuity of our existing live services. It’s a role for someone who combines credible architecture expertise with recent, hands-on engineering experience and who enjoys working closely with delivery teams to turn architectural direction into solutions that work in practice. 

About the team 

The Technology team provides expertise and effective solutions to Penguin Random House. We integrate flexibility and agility which supports our consistent way of working. We set ourselves up for success by holding ourselves accountable and welcoming change. Each member of the Technology team brings skill and initiative to their role; we take personal ownership within a one team culture, working collaboratively to meet expectations from our stakeholders who trust us to deliver. 

The role 

Key responsibilities: 

• Own and evolve the target architecture, principles and migration roadmap for Integration Services, defining clear business-domain boundaries, service ownership and stable contracts. 

• Set reusable architectural patterns for APIs, business events, adapters, synchronous and asynchronous communication, versioning and compatibility. 

• Design Azure integration solutions using services including API Management, Service Bus, Logic Apps, Functions, App Services, Container Apps or AKS, Key Vault and appropriate data services. 

• Define non-functional and engineering requirements across security, resilience, performance, scalability, observability, supportability, disaster recovery, infrastructure as code, CI/CD and automated testing. 

• Create safe modernisation and coexistence approaches for legacy and partner platforms, including adapter patterns, cutover, rollback and decommissioning. 

• Establish secure-by-design standards across identity, authentication, authorisation, secrets and network controls, alongside appropriate governance for MCP and other AI-facing interfaces. 

• Maintain hands-on technical credibility through targeted prototypes, proof-of-concepts and technical spikes that help de-risk important architectural decisions. 

• Lead and contribute to architecture reviews, maintaining clear decisions, standards, reference designs and service documentation, while mentoring developers and enabling teams to make sound technical decisions within agreed architecture. 

• Partner with Enterprise Architecture, Data Architecture, Security, Cloud Platforms and delivery teams to ensure integration designs align with wider organisational strategy and controls. 

• Provide timely architectural guidance during discovery, refinement and delivery, escalating significant enterprise, security, data, commercial or cross-portfolio risks to the appropriate accountable owner. 

What you’ll bring 

Essential criteria: 

• Substantial senior software engineering experience f