Platform Architecture Director

GSK remains committed to achieving bold commercial ambitions for the future. By 2031, we aim to deliver £40 billion in annual sales, leveraging our existing strong performance momentum to significantly increase our positive impact on the health of billions of patients globally.

The Platform Architecture Director owns the architecture of the Cloud & Engineering Platforms domain, setting the target architecture, reference designs and standards, leading the architecture team, and ensuring the domain is coherent, secure and aligned to enterprise architecture.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the domain target architecture, standards and reference designs, aligned to DPTF strategy and to enterprise architecture.
• Lead the architecture team across the domain, managing performance, capability development and succession.
• Own the design assurance process for the domain, setting what must be reviewed, by whom, and against which standards.
• Embed AI patterns into the domain architecture, so that AI-assisted delivery and intelligent operations are designed in rather than added later.
• Architect for reliability and resilience by design across the domain, supporting the SLOs the domain commits to.
• Ensure security and compliance, including GxP where relevant, are designed into the domain rather than inspected in afterwards.
• Guide technology selection and modernisation across the domain, measuring outcomes against architecture OKRs.
• Set the architecture standards that supplier and managed-service solutions in the domain must meet.
• Align the domain to enterprise architecture and technology strategy, negotiating exceptions through Enterprise Architecture rather than around it.
• Advise the Head of Platform Domain on architectural risk, technical debt and the investment needed to address either.
• Increase pattern reuse and reduce rework across the domain, evidencing both with measures rather than assertion.
• Hold the boundaries with the Platform Architects on individual platform designs, the Engineering Director on build and delivery, and Enterprise Architecture on enterprise standards.

Education & Professional Qualifications

• Degree in a technology or engineering discipline, or equivalent practical experience (e.g., Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems).
• Architecture certifications desirable (e.g., TOGAF, or recognised cloud or network architecture certification relevant to the domain).

Experience Required

• Overall 18 Years and typically 10-12 years in technology architecture, including at least three years leading an architecture team with line responsibility.
• Proven experience leading architecture for a large-scale Cloud, Infrastructure & Engineering domain
• Track record running design assurance governance, including holding a standard against delivery pressure.
• Experience architecting for reliability, resilience and security at scale, working to SLOs and error budgets.
• Experience in a regulated environment, ideally pharmaceutical or GxP.
• Experience setting architecture standards for supplier and managed-service delivery and enforcing them.
• Practical grasp of AI patterns for assisted delivery and intelligent operations at architecture level.

Skills/Background

• Executive communication, translating architectural risk into investment and consequence for non-architects.
• Leadership of technical specialists, including developing architects who are strong individually but new to influence.
• Judgement about when the domain should diverge from enterprise standards and how to get that agreed properly.
• Ability to hold a standard when delivery timelines argue against it, without becoming an obstacle.
• Commercial awareness when directing supplier and vendor architecture decisions.
• Comfort making the cost of technical debt visible to leadership rather than absorbing it quietly.