About us

At Exchange for Change, we are building something the UK has never had before. Working across England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, we are designing and delivering a Deposit Return Scheme from the ground up, creating a system that helps reduce litter and waste by encouraging people to return their empty drinks bottles and cans for recycling.

We are not for profit, industry led, and driven by purpose. A national movement with a clear mission. No bottle unreturned. No can left behind.

This is not just another job. This is a rare opportunity to do meaningful work, shape a landmark national programme, and help deliver lasting positive impact for people, businesses and the planet alike.

Your role

As Enterprise and Cloud Architect, you will translate Exchange for Change’s business and technology strategy into a coherent, secure, resilient and evolvable enterprise technology architecture.

You will provide day-to-day architectural leadership across EFC’s technology ecosystem, ensuring that applications, integration, cloud and shared platforms, data technology, cyber security and technology operations work together as one architecture rather than as separate supplier solutions.

This is an enterprise-first role with genuine cloud depth. You will own the enterprise architecture baseline and target state while providing particular leadership for the Azure and shared-platform foundation that underpins much of the EFC estate. Decisions must remain driven by business outcomes, architectural principles, operational realities and long-term sustainability rather than by individual technology products.

You will work closely with business leaders, technology teams, domain architects and delivery partners to turn strategy and programme needs into clear roadmaps, standards, patterns and decisions. You will challenge complexity, manage architectural risk and help delivery teams move at pace without creating unmanaged security, resilience or operational exposure.

This is a greenfield opportunity to shape the architecture of a nationally significant service from the outset. Success will be measured by the coherence, resilience and sustainability of the technology estate, the quality and traceability of decisions, and the ability of architecture governance to enable delivery rather than slow it down.

You’ll be based at our Milton Keynes office (30min from Euston) with the option to work from home 2/3 days per week.

Key Responsibilities & Priorities

• Define and maintain EFC’s enterprise technology architecture baseline, target architecture and key transition states.

• Translate EFC’s technology strategy and multi-year roadmap into practical architecture roadmaps, standards, reference patterns, guardrails and work packages.

• Maintain coherence across EFC’s strategic platforms and domains, including Azure, SAP and SAP BTP, ServiceNow, Databricks, the DRS core, integration services, RVM connectivity and external retailer and supplier interfaces.

• Operate the day-to-day Architecture and Technical Design Authority within delegated authority, reviewing designs, recording decisions and escalating material risks or exceptions where required.

• Ensure supplier and internal designs meet EFC architecture standards, cyber security requirements, engineering principles, non-functional requirements and operational acceptance criteria.

• Own the target architecture for EFC’s Azure estate and shared cloud-platform services, including landing zones, governance, networking, identity patterns, environment segmentation, resilience and platform automation.

• Define architecture patterns for secure connectivity, APIs, events and information exchange across cloud, SaaS, external suppliers, retailers, RVMs and other ecosystem participants.

• Ensure availability, scalability, resilience, recoverability, performance, security, observability and maintainability are designed into solutions from the outset.

• Identify duplication, unnecessary complexity, technology gaps, technical debt and opportunities to simplify, standardise, reuse or modernise the technology estate.

• Support major technology investment, platform and supplier decisions with clear architectural analysis and recommendations that consider whole-life cost and operational sustainability.

• Provide constructive challenge to systems integrators, SaaS providers, strategic vendors and delivery partners, ensuring EFC retains effective technical authority.

• Build a strong architecture community across EFC and its supplier ecosystem, coaching domain architects and senior specialists and promoting collaborative design.

• Act as a trusted technical adviser to senior stakeholders, explaining complex issues clearly and helping the organisation make timely, evidence-based technology decisions.

• Assess relevant emerging technology, automation, AI and agentic opportunities where they offer demonstrable value and fit EFC’s strategic architecture.

What success looks like

• EFC has a clearly understood enterprise technology architecture, target state and transition roadmap.

• Major technology decisions are timely, traceable and aligned with agreed principles, business outcomes and long-term sustainability.

• Supplier designs converge on common architecture patterns rather than creating isolated technology silos.

• Azure operates as a governed enterprise platform rather than a collection of project environments.

• Architecture, security, non-functional and operational concerns are addressed during design rather than emerging during final testing.

• Critical services are designed with appropriate resilience, recovery, performance and observability.

• Architecture exceptions and technical debt have visible ownership, proportionate treatment and credible remediation plans.

• Architecture governance is regarded as an enabler of delivery, providing clear decisions and constructive challenge without unnecessary bureaucracy.

• EFC retains the internal architecture capability needed to govern suppliers effectively and evolve the estate beyond initial scheme launch.

• The technology estate becomes progressively simpler, more standardised, more reusable and easier to operate.

About you

You are an experienced architecture leader who combines strategic systems thinking with genuine technical depth. You are comfortable moving between target-state architecture, programme-level decisions and detailed challenge of cloud and platform designs. You bring:

• Significant experience as an Enterprise Architect, Principal Architect, Chief Architect or equivalent senior architecture leader in a complex organisation.

• Strong experience designing enterprise technology architectures across multi-platform and multi-supplier environments.

• Deep practical Microsoft Azure architecture experience, including landing zones, governance, networking, identity, security and shared-platform services.

• Broad architectural understanding spanning applications, integration, APIs, event-driven architecture, data technology, cyber security, infrastructure and live technology operations.

• Experience operating an Architecture or Technical Design Authority, making clear decisions and managing exceptions, risks and technical debt.

• Experience designing production-grade services with demanding resilience, scalability, availability and recovery requirements.

• A strong understanding of non-functional requirements and how they shape architecture, engineering, testing and operational acceptance.

• Practical knowledge of modern engineering, DevSecOps, infrastructure as code, CI/CD, automation and observability.

• Experience developing technology roadmaps and transition architectures that connect long-term direction to practical delivery.

• Confidence working with and challenging systems integrators, SaaS providers, cloud specialists and strategic platform vendors.

• Exceptional communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical choices to executives, business stakeholders and delivery teams.

• A pragmatic, collaborative and outcomes-focused mindset, with a strong bias towards simplification, standardisation, reuse and sustainable design.

The opportunity

Work that makes a difference - and a place where you can too.

This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to help establish a scheme of national importance, working with purpose-driven colleagues and partners to deliver visible, real-world impact. You’ll contribute directly to meaningful environmental and social change and in return, we support and reward our team through a range of benefits and initiatives, including:

• Competitive base salary

• Bonus scheme

• 34 days holiday inclusive of bank holidays, additional holidays for length of service

• Flexibility with holidays. You may work on a local public holiday and take an alternative day off, giving you the freedom to celebrate the days that matter most to you.

• 5% employer pension contribution

• Life Insurance: Cover of 4 times base salary

• Private Medical Insurance: Includes GP access and an Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) for wellbeing support

• Income protection

• Family Leave: Maternity, adoption, parental, and paternity leave policies will be developed to be progressive and inclusive.

• Hybrid Working: 60% office or field-based and 40% home-based, with some flexibility according to business and personal needs.