Lead solution architect
12 days ago
Sunbury-on-Thames
Entity: Technology Job Family Group: IT&S Group Job Description: Our purpose is to deliver energy to the world, today and tomorrow. For over 100 years, bp has focused on discovering, developing, and producing oil and gas in the nations where we operate. We are one of the few companies globally that can provide governments and customers with an integrated energy offering. Delivering our strategy sustainably is fundamental to achieving our ambition to be a net zero company by 2050 or sooner. The AWS Platform Architect is responsible for defining, evolving, and governing the architecture of bp’s AWS cloud platform. This role sets the strategic technical direction for AWS within bp, ensuring the platform is consistent, secure, scalable, intelligent, and aligned with bp’s broader enterprise architecture principles. Broader cloud service provider architecture experience is valuable to bring wider perspective and support enterprise alignment where needed, but the primary focus of this role is AWS cloud platform architecture. Working closely with the Head of AWS Platform, Platform Engineering teams, and peer technology domains, this role translates strategy into a clear platform architecture roadmap and set of standards that enable product and application teams to build and run workloads effectively on AWS. A key aspect of this role is maintaining strong technical credibility through hands-on engagement with AWS services and emerging cloud-native and AI capabilities. The AWS Platform Architect is expected to actively evaluate, prototype, and pilot AWS and AI-enabled services to ensure architectural decisions are grounded in real implementation experience, not theory alone. The role acts as a senior architectural authority for AWS within bp, influencing across multiple teams and domains, and ensuring that AWS platform capabilities are delivered as a coherent, reusable enterprise product. The AWS Platform Architect plays a critical role in ensuring bp’s AWS platform is not just a collection of services, but a coherent, well-governed, AI-enabled enterprise capability. This role ensures that teams across bp can build on AWS safely, consistently, and efficiently, while accelerating delivery through automation, intelligence, and modern AI-enabled platform services. • Define and maintain the AWS platform architecture strategy and target-state design across bp., • Develop and evolve the AWS platform roadmap in partnership with the Head of AWS Platform and Platform Engineering teams., • Translate enterprise and business requirements into clear architectural direction and prioritised platform capabilities., • Identify opportunities to improve scalability, resilience, security, cost efficiency, developer experience, and AI enablement across the AWS platform., • Ensure AWS platform evolution aligns with bp’s wider cloud, data, and AI strategy, including multi-cloud consistency where appropriate., • Drive the adoption of AI-enabled capabilities across the AWS platform where they improve automation, engineering productivity, observability, and operational decision-making., • Define and maintain AWS reference architectures, patterns, and reusable platform building blocks., • Establish architectural guardrails to ensure secure, compliant, consistent, and responsible use of AWS and AI capabilities across bp., • Drive consistency in platform design across AWS and other cloud environments, balancing standardisation with platform-specific optimisation., • Ensure security, identity, networking, observability, operational requirements, and AI governance considerations are embedded in AWS platform architecture by design, including AWS-specific patterns for network products, standards, and security controls such as SD-WAN and cloud-connected security capabilities., • Evaluate new AWS and AI services and capabilities, providing clear guidance on adoption, constraints, and patterns., • Define standards for safe and responsible use of AI services within the AWS platform, including data handling, model usage, and integration patterns., • Maintain strong hands-on technical engagement with AWS services and AI-enabled cloud capabilities, including prototyping and piloting new technologies., • Validate architectural decisions through practical implementation experience, proof-of-concepts, and experimentation., • Work closely with engineers to test and refine platform patterns, including AI-assisted development, before enterprise-wide adoption., • Act as a technical authority who can demonstrate, not just describe, AWS and AI architectural approaches., • Explore and assess emerging AWS AI services (such as foundation model services, agentic frameworks, and AI-enabled tooling) for platform applicability., • Work closely with Connectivity, Identity, Security, Data, and other shared technology teams to deliver integrated platform capabilities., • Partner with Platform Engineering teams to ensure architectural designs are translated into operational, consumable platform services., • Engage with application and product teams to understand requirements and provide clear, pragmatic architectural guidance., • Support teams in adopting AI capabilities within their workloads in a safe, governed, and scalable way., • Influence technical decisions across programmes, ensuring alignment with platform standards and reducing fragmentation., • Act as a trusted advisor across engineering, architecture, and delivery communities., • Provide architectural leadership across the AWS platform domain., • Lead and contribute to architecture review processes and technical governance forums., • Mentor engineers and architects, raising overall architectural capability within the platform organisation., • Promote engineering excellence, including Infrastructure as Code, automation, CI/CD, self-service platforms, cloud-native design principles, and AI-augmented engineering practices., • Identify and address technical debt, architectural risks, and capability gaps within the platform., • Define and evolve governance for responsible AI usage within the AWS platform ecosystem., • Ensure AWS platform architecture meets bp security, regulatory, and risk requirements., • Embed resilience, reliability, observability, and AI safety considerations into platform design standards., • Identify architectural risks and define mitigation or remediation strategies., • Support audit and compliance activities related to AWS and AI platform services., • Drive continuous improvement in operational efficiency, automation, and platform stability through AI-enabled insights and tooling., • Extensive experience designing and operating enterprise-scale AWS platforms., • Strong understanding of AWS core services including networking, identity, security, compute, storage, observability, and the related network products, standards, and security patterns — such as SD-WAN and cloud-connected security controls — that integrate directly with AWS., • Experience designing cloud landing zones, platform foundations, and reusable enterprise cloud architectures, with AWS as the primary area of depth., • Deep knowledge of Infrastructure as Code tools such as Terraform or CloudFormation., • Strong understanding of cloud governance, security controls, and compliance frameworks., • Experience with platform engineering concepts, including internal developer platforms and self-service enablement., • Familiarity with AI/ML and generative AI concepts and how they integrate into cloud platforms., • Shown ability to define and deliver cloud architecture roadmaps in large enterprise environments., • Hands-on experience using, implementing, and piloting AWS services in real environments., • Practical experience evaluating and integrating AI-enabled services or tools within cloud platforms or engineering workflows., • Experience validating architectural designs through prototypes, proof-of-concepts, and live experimentation., • The ability to combine strategic architecture thinking with practical engineering and AI-enabled innovation insight., • Strong ability to influence across complex, matrixed organisations without direct authority., • Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills, with the ability to translate complex technical concepts into clear outcomes., • Ability to build trusted relationships across architecture, engineering, security, data, and product teams., • Strong decision-making skills, balancing risk, cost, technical trade-offs, and AI adoption considerations., • Ability to lead through ambiguity and provide clarity in evolving technical landscapes., • Strong focus on outcomes, value delivery, and operational impact., • Experience across other cloud service providers, such as Azure and Google Cloud, with the ability to apply that perspective in support of deep AWS platform expertise and broader enterprise architecture alignment., • Deep experience working in large-scale enterprise or regulated environments., • AWS certification at professional or specialty level., • Experience building or contributing to internal developer platforms., • Strong background in modern platform engineering practices., • Demonstrated ability to remain hands-on with technology while operating in a senior architecture role., • Experience driving enterprise adoption of AI capabilities in cloud platforms, engineering productivity, or operational tooling. Travel Requirement Negligible travel should be expected with this role Relocation Assistance: This role is not eligible for relocation Remote Type: This position is a hybrid of office/remote working Skills: Agility core practices, Business modelling, Creativity and Innovation, Data Analysis, Data design, Digital Analytics, Emerging technology monitoring, Information Assurance, Integration, IT Management, IT strategy and planning, Network Design, Requirements definition and management, Risk Management, Service operations and resiliency, Solution Architecture, Systems Development Management, Technical specialism, User Experience Analysis Legal Disclaimer: We are an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of protected characteristics like race, religion, color, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, veteran status or disability status. 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