AWS Principal System Architect

Recruiter: Luke Byrne

Career Grade: CLC

Internal Closing Date: 16th August 2026

Locations: London or Bristol

About the role

An AWS Principal Systems/Solutions Architect is a senior technology leader responsible for translating complex business objectives into scalable, secure, and resilient cloud solutions. They establish the strategic architecture vision and cloud operating model, define enterprise-wide technical standards, and guide engineering teams in the adoption of modern cloud-native technologies such as AI/ML, serverless computing, data platforms, and automation. Acting as a trusted advisor to both business and technical stakeholders, they ensure that mission-critical workloads are designed for high availability, performance, security, and cost optimisation while driving innovation, governance, and long-term technology strategy.

What you’ll be doing

• Strategic System Design: Architect highly available, fault-tolerant, and secure multi-region architectures aligned with the AWS Well-Architected Framework.
• Architect Scalable AWS Solutions: Design and implement enterprise-grade AWS pipelines and architectures using AWS services (e.g. S3, Glue, Lambda, Redshift, EMR, Kinesis), optimised for analytics and scalability.
• Accountable and responsible for Design and operationalises AIOps pipelines (SageMaker, anomaly detection, automated root-cause/remediation) over network and network telemetry.
• Set Technical Direction: Define and guide technical decisions related to data conceptualisation, modelling, and visualisation within the organisation’s analytics ecosystem.
• Champion Data Governance and Access: Drive visibility into data usage and access, ensuring secure, compliant, and transparent data practices across the organisation.
• Communicate with Impact: Translate complex technical concepts into clear, non-technical language for business stakeholders and internal customers.
• Act as a Subject Matter Expert: Serve as a go-to expert in data architecture, resolving complex issues and fostering thought leadership and technical excellence.
• Drive Standards and Best Practices: Lead the implementation of architectural guidelines and frameworks, ensuring alignment with strategic objectives and consistency across solutions.
• Monitor and Optimise Services: Define and oversee service metrics, collaborating with stakeholders to meet performance standards and client expectations.
• Innovate and Evolve Architecture: Spearhead legacy system migrations and drive the adoption of cutting-edge capabilities like agentic AI, Generative AI, and autonomous workloads in enterprise contexts
• Mentor and Develop Talent: Coach and support experienced professionals, building current and future capabilities within the data architecture team.
• Lead Continuous Improvement: Identify and implement process enhancements to improve the efficiency, quality, and agility of data architecture practices.
• Cloud Governance : Utilize tools such as IAM, resource tagging, cost management, etc. to enforce AWS governance policies and implement monitoring and alerting solutions to address issues proactively.

Essential Skills / Experience

• Extensive AWS Experience: Demonstrated 6 to 8 + years of experience with AWS Professional-level certification. Experience in designing complex data pipelines deployed in AWS, with deep knowledge of all foundational AWS services and major data analytics services.
• System Design Expertise: Proven experience in system design, including distributed systems, and the use of AWS to achieve reliable and robust systems.
• AWS Services Focus: Proven track records of using AWS native services
• Streaming and Lakehouse Architectures: Proven skills in designing streaming and Lakehouse architectures, as well as optimising capabilities for real-time analytics.
• Broad Knowledge Base: Expected to have the breadth and depth of knowledge to own diverse system designs outside of the cloud data area and demonstrate the ability to learn and adapt quickly.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to articulate technical solutions clearly
• Recognised as an expert in AWS cloud services, particularly in designing and implementing scalable data engineering solutions.
• Bring extensive experience in software architecture and solution design, ensuring robust and future-proof systems.
• Demonstrate the ability to set technical direction, uphold high standards for code quality, and optimise performance in data-intensive environments.
• An exceptional communicator, capable of translating complex technical concepts for diverse audiences including engineers, product managers, and senior leadership.
• Provide thought leadership within engineering teams, fostering a culture of quality, efficiency, and collaboration.

Our Package

• 15% on target bonus
• Company car or £5,500 cash alternative
• Private healthcare for self and family
• BT Pension scheme, minimum 5% Employee contribution, BT contribution 10%
• From January 2025, equal family leave: receive 18 weeks at full pay, 8 weeks at half pay and 26 weeks at the statutory rate. It’s for all parents, no matter how your family is made up.
• 25 days annual leave (not including bank holidays), increasing with service
• Huge range of flexible benefits including cycle to work, healthcare, season ticket loan
• World-class training and development opportunities
• Option to join BT Shares Saving schemes.
• Discounted broadband, mobile and TV packages
• Access to 100’s of retail discounts including the BT shop

BT Group is the UK’s leading communications group and the holding company behind some of the country’s most recognised brands – including BT, EE, Openreach and Plusnet. Our purpose is as simple as it is ambitious: we connect for good. Our customers include consumers, small, medium and large businesses, public sector organisations and other communications providers.

BT Group’s role is about setting direction, unlocking value and creating the conditions for our brands and businesses to thrive.

Having come through the most capital-intensive phase of our fibre investment, our focus now is on what comes next – simplifying how we operate, using technology and AI to work smarter, and organising ourselves to serve customers better and grow sustainably. Group teams shape strategy, policy, brand, capital allocation and transformation, helping the whole organisation perform at its best.

We have a singular culture that unites all our people: we are customer-first challengers, who are committed, clear and connected. These behaviours unite us as one team to deliver for our colleagues, our customers, our stakeholders and the country. Joining BT Group means working at the heart of a business that matters to the UK, with the opportunity to shape decisions, influence outcomes and help set the future course of one of the country’s most important companies.