Consultant IT Infrastructure Architect

• Salary Range: £110k to £118K plus Fantastic Benefits
• Location: North Greenwich, London, 50% Office Attendance Model
• Role type: Permanent
• UK Sponsorship: Not available for this role
• Advert closing date: Tuesday 17th September 2026 at 23.59

About us

The Hosting Infrastructure Architecture function provides strategic leadership for infrastructure design across TfL, establishing the platforms, standards, policies, and patterns that underpin technology delivery. The team ensures infrastructure decisions are aligned to organisational strategy, maximise value, and optimise total cost of ownership (TCO), acting as the ultimate authority for infrastructure architecture

Examples of what we do in the team

• Lead the transformation of TfL’s critical IT infrastructure estate, spanning both on-premises data centres and cloud platforms, to improve resilience, scalability, security, and operational efficiency.
• Lead the introduction and adoption of AIOps capabilities across infrastructure operations, leveraging automation, analytics, and machine learning to enhance service reliability, reduce incidents, and improve operational performance..
• Lead the delivery of a diverse portfolio of digital transformation programmes across customer and corporate services, driving the adoption of secure, modern, and efficient technology solutions that support organisational goals

About the role

The consultant infrastructure architect is responsible for providing strategic technical leadership across the organisation, engaging and influencing senior stakeholders to drive business and technology outcomes. The role identifies and champions opportunities for digital transformation, supports multiple teams in adopting best practices and emerging technologies, and provides guidance to architects and technical teams to ensure alignment with organisational objectives.

You will be accountable for the management, development and performance of an architecture team, while also leading and influencing matrix managed teams across technology and business functions to deliver successful outcomes. The role fosters a high-performance culture, develops technical capability, and provides mentorship to architects and engineers.

You will be responsible for architecture governance, the resolution of complex and high-risk technical challenges, and the delivery of robust, scalable, and secure architecture designs that support the organisation’s long term strategy.

Key duties

• Accountable for the development and quality of all technical infrastructure designs and for ensuring that delivery of products into production is consistent with those designs
• Accountable for the determination, communication and promulgation of the appropriate: frameworks, standards, libraries and approach to be adopted, ensuring successful translation of these architectures into working solutions; and for ensuring that these are kept up-to-date
• Accountable for ensuring that TfL architecture and approach is followed and there is clear traceability, transparency and accountability from design to the final solution
• Lead in the development and implementation of initiatives to continuously improve the performance of the technology solutions architecture service
• Accountable and responsible for the effective allocation and prioritisation of related architecture resources to all infrastructure architecture service engagements and projects
• Accountable for the budget, estimate, planning and establishment of objectives for the architecture and design function, following agreed polices and using the appropriate techniques and tools annually as well as over a three to five year period
• Provide timely and accurate quotations for architectural infrastructure services ensuring clear understanding of the precise services and outcomes that will be delivered
• Accountable for the systematic evaluation and selection of preferred infrastructure solutions based upon functional fit and total cost of ownership
• Accountable for effective stakeholder communication of infrastructure design decisions and generating senior director level stakeholders buy-in

Knowledge

• Expert knowledge of large critical infrastructure systems architectures, cloud SaaS, PaaS, Iaas and hybrid delivery approaches.
• Expert knowledge of infrastructure capability modelling and requirements elicitation techniques.
• Detailed knowledge of infrastructure development, design and management frameworks
• Broad knowledge and understanding of planning and project management tools and techniques.
• Broad knowledge in systems development technologies and methodologies, in particular agile scrum
• Expert in mixed system development methodology especially multi vendor (internal and external) environments
• Expert in techniques to manage and resolve conflicting priorities in multi vendor environments, ensuring balanced and timely decision making that is cost effective and does not yield unnecessary risks to TfL
• Broad knowledge of customer facing and back office technologies and architectures, particularly those that relate to public transport operations
• Degree in relevant subject area or appropriate infrastructure certification is desirable

Skills

• Proven experience in working at a senior management level with strong leadership and people management skills
• Strong architecture skills in business critical standardised infrastructure systems and total cost optimisation, • Ability to take a high level set of requirements/management brief and build a concept infrastructure architecture using standardised tooling and modelling techniques. Refining the infrastructure architecture as more information is discovered, decisions identified and choices made
• Ability to analyse complex infrastructure scenarios, identify key decisions points, opportunities, draw conclusions and produce infrastructure architecture roadmaps,
• Ability to map the traceability between a business and technical requirement,
• Managing effectively with ambiguity across multiple stakeholders and projects,
• Strong written and verbal communication skills including ability to explain complex information with senior management and directors, produce summary and feasibility reports on complex technical and business issues.

Experience

• Of graduate calibre, with an excellent understanding of structured architecture approaches such as TOGAF.
• Have experience of optimising business process implementation in multi-tier business systems
• Proven experience of developing business and systems architecture within an overall agile development process. Fully familiar with the tools and techniques used
• A team player committed to getting the job done in a timely and quality driven manner.
• Have sound understanding of highly available large-scale infrastructure systems with specific experience of architecting cross functional high performance processing platforms (~100’s of transactions per second).
• Experience of communicating end to end solutions to a number of different audiences.

Excellent Benefits include

Final salary pension scheme

Free travel for you on the TfL network

Reimbursement of 75% of the cost of a standard class Ticket for National Rail travel from home or 75% reimbursement on a 28-day flexi ticket

30 days annual leave plus public and bank holidays

TfL is committed to work-life balance, operating a hybrid working approach where business and role requirements allow

Private healthcare discounted scheme (optional)

Tax-efficient cycle-to-work programme

Retail, health, leisure and travel offers

Discounted Eurostar travel and much more!

Please apply supplying your CV preferably in “.docx” format. This document should be A4, in Arial 12 font, and a maximum of 2 pages per document.

If you are shortlisted you may be invited to take part in a Video interview. We endeavour to give candidates as much notice as possible however some interviews/ assessments will be organised at short notice and will require a degree of flexibility. We reserve the right to close the application window early if we receive a high volume of suitable applications.

Equality, diversity and inclusion

We are committed to equality, diversity and inclusion and aim to reflect the diverse communities we serve. We believe that a diverse workforce enables us to deliver better services and outcomes. Our goal is to make our recruitment as inclusive as possible. As a Disability Confident Leader, we actively encourage applications from disabled people. As part of the Disability Confident scheme, we aim to offer an assessment or interview to candidates who apply via the scheme where the minimum essential criteria for skills, knowledge and experience has been met.

In some circumstances, it may not be practical to offer an interview or assessment to every candidate who applies through the scheme and meet the minimum essential criteria; in these situations, we select candidates who best meet the minimum criteria for the job rather than interviewing all who meet them.

Across all recruitment activity, we recognise that selection methods may vary depending on the nature and scale of the campaign and will be applied fairly, consistently and proportionately in line with our Disability Confident commitments.

Many of our staff work flexibly in many different ways. Please talk to us at interview about the flexibility you need. We'll see what we can do.

We understand a confidence gap can get in the way of meeting spectacular candidates. So please don’t hesitate to apply if you think you have what it takes even if you feel you don’t meet all the criteria. We’d love to hear from you.

At Transport for London, safety, trust and fairness sit at the heart of how we recruit. Our Vetting Charter (https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/careers/our-vetting-process) explains the checks we carry out before you join us, helping ensure we create a safe, inclusive and reliable network for everyone who depends on our services. We simply ask that the information you provide is honest and accurate so we can progress your application smoothly. If something doesn’t match or can’t be verified, we may not be able to move forward with your application but we’ll always treat you with transparency, respect and clear communication throughout.