Lead Architect

Time left to apply: End Date: July 31, 2025 (6 days left to apply)

Job requisition id: JR13209

Reporting to: Chief Technology Officer

Here at The Gym Group, we believe we are simply the best in our industry! Our amazing teams have skills, abilities, and can-do attitudes that make this a great place to work! We have strong, embedded values and an easy-going culture which ensures we put our people first. We pride ourselves on being fun, innovative, inclusive, and engaging. We are now on the lookout for a Lead Architect.

So, what's stopping you? Apply today and be YOU with us!

What you need to know about us

The Gym Group is not like your average gym! To our members, we're the lowest cost nationwide 24/7 Gym with over 240 gyms and counting! Our teams are fun, welcoming, engaging, and inclusive. We challenge our limits and push ourselves to impact positive change with our goals and initiatives. We take steps into new areas with a real and authentic purpose - It's our mission to break down barriers to fitness for all.

We're in our industry when it comes to our values, our culture, and our people - check out Glassdoor if you don't believe us. We offer a fantastic place to work in a great working culture. We have been recognized as one of The Sunday Times Best Places to Work, which is all down to our great leaders and exceptional teams.

We may be one of the leading budget gym chains in the UK, but there's nothing budget about our investment into our people. We have retained GOLD in our Investors in People award for the last 6 years and silver in wellbeing last year. We're recognized as a disability confident and inclusive employer, which we are truly proud of. We have a brilliant team and opportunities for development and growth with support for success. Having recently undertaken some huge digital projects, our plans are to keep being innovative, creative, and agile in all that we do.

About the role

Reporting directly to the CTO, as the Lead Architect, you will shape the architectural blueprint that enables our technology vision. Guiding and coordinating a team of Solution Architects, Technical Architects, System Analysts, and Solution Designers, you will maintain robust and comprehensive documentation of current and target states across our technology landscape. You will define and maintain our architectural governance model and specify the architecture toolset and frameworks. You will advise and inform the business to optimize our Capabilities and Application Lifecycle. This is both a strategic and hands-on role: setting architectural vision, enabling scale, and ensuring technical excellence in execution. The role will engage your breadth and depth of experience across the whole technology domain.

Key responsibilities

• Own and evolve the enterprise architecture blueprint, reference architectures, and target state definitions
• Shape architecture principles and governance, driving alignment across business, data, applications, infrastructure, and security
• Lead technical decision-making across TGG's cloud platform including 3rd party integrations
• Act as the senior technical voice in executive and programme-level forums, influencing both strategic investments and day-to-day designs
• Drive architectural runway, risk management, and lifecycle planning to support growth, resilience, and innovation
• Foster architectural standards, documentation, and tooling adoption (e.g., C4, Archimate, UML, LeanIX)

About you

We're looking for a strategic and accomplished Lead Architect to drive our technology architecture forward. You'll need to possess the following skills/experience:

• Strategic Architecture Leadership
• Extensive experience in enterprise and solution architecture for mid-to-large digital businesses.
• Proven ability to define and manage architecture governance, roadmaps, and standards.
• Strong influencing skills to align senior stakeholders and delivery teams with the architectural vision.
• Deep fluency with Microsoft Azure, specializing in the architecture of scaled, cloud-native, and distributed systems.
• Expertise in designing for high-availability, fault tolerance, and auto-scaling patterns.
• Proficiency in designing secure, multi-tier applications using modern API and messaging protocols.

Software & Application Architecture

• Solid understanding of modern architectural patterns including DDD, Hexagonal Architecture, and CQRS.
• Proven ability to design and evaluate decoupled, microservice-based systems.
• Familiarity with a broad range of integration patterns and cross-cutting concerns.

Security, Data, and Performance

• In-depth knowledge of regulatory frameworks like ISO 27001, PCI DSS, and GDPR.
• Expertise in identity and access management, observability, and database architecture (SQL/NoSQL).

Tools & Methodologies

• Proficiency in architecture modeling standards like UML and C4.
• Strong understanding of modern engineering and DevOps practices.
• Experience with Agile and product-oriented delivery cultures.

We are pleased that you are checking us out We know that we are a great place to work, but we would love to help you see that. You can really be YOU with us whatever your career journey - we're with you.

We're in our industry when it comes to our values, our culture, and our people - check out Glassdoor if you don't believe us. We offer a fantastic place to work in a great working culture and were recognized as in the Top 50 places to work in the UK in 2022!

We may be one of the leading budget gym chains in the UK, but there's nothing budget about our investment into our people. We have retained GOLD in our Investors in People award for the last 6 years and were awarded silver in wellbeing last year. We're also recognized as a disability confident and inclusive employer, which we are truly proud of.

We have been through some great and positive changes recently, from our shiny new "super G" logo to our exciting digital projects. Our plans are to keep being innovative, creative, and agile in all that we do, and we want to do that sustainably.

We hire people with real passion, positivity, and enthusiasm who motivate and inspire those around them. Our vision is to have a diverse, high-performing, engaged workforce that loves what they do!

We have a brilliant team and opportunities for development and growth with support for success. We don't want to stand still; we're growing, innovating, and adapting. We're with you to reach your career goals too.