IT Systems Architect Principal

Job Description

Recruiter: Djoice Bastos Silva

Hiring Manager: Alex Bogdanov

We are hiring in the UK, India, Hungary, Spain, and Poland. If you have the right skills and are based in one of these locations, we encourage you to apply.

At BT International, our purpose is to keep the world connected. As part of BT, we build on almost 180 years of innovation and expertise to deliver secure connectivity and digital services to some of the world’s leading multinational businesses and organisations. Our customers trust us to safeguard their data, drive their digital transformation and keep their businesses running. With colleagues on the ground across the world and supporting customers wherever they need to operate, BT International offers a truly global experience. Whether it’s about providing cloud connectivity, helping organisations collaborate, or enabling innovation in cybersecurity and digital services, you’ll be part of a team that shapes how businesses succeed in a world that is being transformed by AI. If you have the drive and ambition to make an impact on a global stage, BT International is where it happens.

Why this job maters

The IT Systems Architect Principal is central to BT International's ability to deliver products at velocity while maintaining operational excellence. This role owns the platform transformation and vendor rationalization strategy that directly impacts product team autonomy, cost efficiency and speed to market. This architect ensures every architectural decision drives product velocity and long-term value. This position leads vendor rationalization, establishes composable platform patterns and collaborates with senior stakeholders. By aligning platform architecture with business imperatives and group strategy, the role ensures BT International remains competitive, agile and customer-focused in a rapidly evolving global landscape.

What you´ll be doing - Your accountablities

1. Define and lead the architectural strategy for IT systems and BSS modernization across BT International, establishing the target state architecture that guides system rationalization, vendor consolidation and platform transformation initiatives

2. Own the application portfolio rationalization roadmap, making strategic keep/modernize/retire decisions based on technical fitness, business value and architectural alignment while managing stakeholder expectations

3. Establish API-first integration architecture that decouples BSS systems from each other and from product applications, creating clear service boundaries that enable independent team delivery and reduce system dependencies

4. Lead vendor rationalization strategy across SaaS platforms, on-premise systems and cloud-based solutions, reducing vendor dependencies through strategic build vs buy decisions and phasing out unnecessary third-party systems in favor of composable in-house capabilities

5. Champion modern architecture patterns including microservices, event-driven integration and API gateways that enable incremental transformation without big-bang rewrites

6. Collaborate with Data & AI architects to ensure IT systems generate high-quality data with proper lineage and governance, enabling analytics and AI capabilities across the platform

7. Drive architectural governance through design reviews and architecture conformance processes, ensuring solutions align with platform standards while empowering team autonomy and decision-making

8. Participate in technical spike work and proof-of-concepts to validate architectural decisions, evaluate integration approaches and prove out modernization strategies before committing to full implementation

9. Provide technical thought leadership on emerging platform architecture trends including composable architecture, API management and platform engineering, translating these into roadmaps that align with BT International's platform strategy

10. Mentor architects and engineers, fostering architectural thinking and technical leadership capability across both the architecture and product engineering organizations

The Skills you´ll need to succeed

Strategic Architecture Leadership – Proven ability to define and communicate architectural vision for complex enterprise landscapes, with track record driving large-scale modernization programs in regulated industries

BSS Domain Expertise – Deep understanding of telco BSS systems including billing, order management, product catalog, CPQ and customer lifecycle management, with knowledge of how these capabilities support business operations

Platform Integration Architecture – Extensive experience designing API-first integration architectures, event-driven patterns and service abstraction layers that enable loose coupling in complex system landscapes

Vendor & Stakeholder Management – Strong ability to work with enterprise software vendors as strategic partners, negotiate technical implementations and manage complex stakeholder relationships across business and technology teams

Modernization Patterns – Expert knowledge of incremental modernization approaches that minimize risk while enabling continuous delivery

Technical Depth – Hands-on background in systems integration and architecture with coding capability in at least one language, enabling credibility with engineering teams and hands-on spike work when needed

Platform Engineering Mindset – Understanding of platform-as-a-product principles, developer experience design and how to build self-service capabilities that enable team autonomy at scale

Telco Transformation Context – Experience navigating organizational and technical challenges of telco modernization including regulatory requirements, billing accuracy, revenue assurance and operational continuity

Leadership & Influence – Ability to lead through influence rather than authority, build consensus across organizational boundaries and develop technical leadership capability in others

The skills you’ll need

System DesignMarket AnalysisChange ManagementData PrivacyProduct RoadmappingCloud ComputingSolution DesignStrategic PlanningTechnology GovernanceAgile MethodologiesEnterprise ArchitectureDecision MakingProject/Programme ManagementGrowth MindsetStandards DesignBusiness AnalysisInclusive Leadership

Our leadership standards

Looking in:
Leading inclusively and Safely
I inspire and build trust through self-awareness, honesty and integrity.
Owning outcomes
I take the right decisions that benefit the broader organisation.

Looking out:
Delivering for the customer
I execute brilliantly on clear priorities that add value to our customers and the wider business.
Commercially savvy
I demonstrate strong commercial focus, bringing an external perspective to decision-making.

Looking to the future:
Growth mindset
I experiment and identify opportunities for growth for both myself and the organisation.
Building for the future
I build diverse future-ready teams where all individuals can be at their best.