Senior Azure Application Architect

Senior Azure Application Architect (.NET / Azure) Location: Newcastle upon Tyne | Hybrid (3 Days Office / 2 Days Home) Type: Full-time, Permanent Overview An established UK financial services organisation is looking to appoint a Senior Azure Application Architect into a newly created role within its Development function. This is an opportunity to take ownership of reviewing and evolving an established Azure application estate rather than simply designing greenfield solutions. You'll initially assess a modern Azure native platform, establish its architectural baseline and identify opportunities to improve resilience, security, performance, scalability and cost efficiency. The remit is expected to expand across the wider application estate, with genuine autonomy to help establish architectural standards, influence longer term technical direction and potentially shape additional architectural capability around you. Key Responsibilities • Own the ongoing review and evolution of Azure application architecture • Assess existing platforms for architectural robustness, resilience and technical risk • Identify improvements across security, performance, scalability, reliability and cost • Establish architectural standards, principles and longer term technical direction • Develop pragmatic remediation plans rather than defaulting to large scale rewrites • Work across Development, DevOps, Security and Product to implement architectural improvements • Improve application resilience, observability, monitoring and disaster recovery • Evaluate new Azure services, AI tooling and engineering technologies against genuine business requirements • Provide hands on technical leadership across application and platform initiatives • Develop a longer term architectural roadmap as the wider application estate is assessed Requirements • Strong commercial Microsoft Azure architecture experience • Strong software engineering background, ideally C# and .NET • Experience designing and supporting cloud based applications and distributed systems • Strong knowledge of APIs, microservices, integration and cloud native architecture • Experience assessing and improving existing application estates • Strong understanding of resilience, availability, disaster recovery and application performance • Experience identifying architectural risk and translating findings into practical improvement plans • Strong technical leadership and stakeholder management skills Desirable • Experience within financial services or another regulated environment • Azure DevOps, CI/CD and mature SDLC experience • Application monitoring, observability and root cause analysis experience • Exposure to AI assisted software development and engineering automation • Previous Principal Engineer, Staff Engineer or senior technical leadership experience What’s on Offer • £70,000 to £75,000 basic salary • Hybrid working with three days per week in Newcastle • Newly created position with significant autonomy and influence • Opportunity to shape architectural direction across a sizeable application estate • Scope for the remit and architectural capability to grow around the successful person • Established organisation offering technical complexity, resources and long term opportunity Apply This role would particularly suit an experienced Azure or Software Architect who originally came through hands on software engineering and still wants to remain close enough to the technology to challenge solutions and influence engineering decisions. If you want the opportunity to assess an established environment, identify what genuinely needs improving and help shape its architectural direction over the coming years, apply now or get in touch for a confidential discussion.