Closing Date
2026-09-01
Job Title: Lead Technology Architect
Location: Durrington (Hybrid)
Contract Type: Permanent
Salary: Competitive depending on skills and experience
The Lead Technology Architect is a pivotal role within the Digital Architecture team, responsible for shaping strategy and providing architectural leadership across Southern Water’s IT and OT technology domains.
Technology Architecture is responsible for shaping and governing Southern Water’s core technology landscape across infrastructure, cloud, networking, security, operational technology and data. The Lead Technology plays a strategic leadership role in defining technology direction, guiding platform evolution, and ensuring architectural alignment with business goals and digital ambitions.
The role provides architectural oversight across foundational platforms and infrastructure services, collaborates with cross-functional teams to deliver secure, scalable, and cost-effective solutions, and influences strategic decisions through governance forums and design authority. It acts as a key advisor on technology matters, enabling business outcomes while managing complexity and risk across IT and OT environments.
This role is accountable for delivering architectural leadership across Southern Water’s core technology domains, ensuring alignment with strategic goals and enabling secure, scalable, and cost-effective solutions. Working within the Digital Architecture team and in collaboration with the wider Digital Directorate and business stakeholders, the role contributes to the following key outputs:
Technology Strategy & Planning – Translating business and digital objectives into actionable architecture strategies and roadmaps for infrastructure, cloud, security, and operational technology.
Solution Architecture – Shaping and guiding solution designs that meet business needs while ensuring technical integrity, scalability, and supportability.
Infrastructure Design – Defining and evolving infrastructure patterns and domain roadmaps, including hybrid cloud, identity management, endpoint management, and virtualisation.
Enterprise IT Governance – Participating in architecture forums and design authorities to provide governance and assurance across technology domains.
Technology Research – Monitoring emerging technologies and evaluating their relevance and impact on Southern Water’s digital landscape.
Consultancy – Acting as a senior advisor to solution architects and platform teams, influencing key decisions and supporting programme delivery.
Stakeholder Relationship Management – Engaging with technical and non-technical stakeholders to ensure architectural alignment and shared understanding of technology direction.
The role will have direct reports, which will require line management and appropriate support for performance, development and retention.
Skills and Competencies
The candidate must have significant skills & competency in IT Architecture which include the following:
Solution Architecture – Leads the design of technology solutions across infrastructure and cloud domains, ensuring alignment with strategic goals.
Infrastructure Design – Defines and evolves infrastructure patterns and services to support scalable and resilient platforms.
Technology Strategy and Planning – Develops and maintains strategic technology roadmaps aligned to business and digital objectives.
Enterprise IT Governance – Applies governance to architecture decisions, ensuring consistency, compliance, and reuse.
Systems Design – Reviews and assures system designs for quality, scalability, and supportability.
Technology Research – Evaluates emerging technologies and trends to inform strategic direction and innovation.
Leadership – Provides technical leadership across architecture domains, setting direction and priorities.
People Management – Manages and develops a team of architects, supporting performance, growth, and retention.
Knowledge
Technical
Qualifications - Desirable
Onsite a minimum of 2 days per week in Durrington office.
We are one of the largest water and wastewater companies in the South East of England and thrive on the passion and hard work of more than 2,000 employees.
Together we supply 532 million litres of drinking water every day to more than two million customers and treat and recycle 717 million litres of wastewater for more than four million customers in Kent, Sussex, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.
Water is essential to every aspect of our lives and we're proud to be at the heart of managing water and wastewater services. We drink it, cook with it and use it to clean. Our water supply faces big challenges - the population of the South East is growing fast, and climate change is bringing greater risk of droughts and more extreme weather. It’s a future of more people needing water and wastewater services, with less water to go around.
So, together with our customers and communities, we aim to provide a sustainable, high-quality water and wastewater service that helps us create a resilient future for water in the South East.
Find out more about us:
Website: www.southernwater.co.uk
Facebook: www.facebook.com/SouthernWater
Twitter: @SouthernWater
Instagram: @southernwatermedia
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