Lead Associate - AI / .NET

The Lead Associate - AI / .NET is a key technical leader within the technology organisation, responsible for designing secure, scalable, and modern software solutions that support Davies’ strategic goals. This role provides architectural direction across multiple products and platforms, ensuring that engineering teams follow best practices, technology standards, and architectural patterns. The Architect works closely with fellow Architects, Platform Engineers, Product Owners, Developers, and business stakeholders to ensure that solutions are practical, cloud native, maintainable, and aligned to the long term technology roadmap. The role requires hands-on experience designing and building cloud-native applications using Azure, AWS, or GCP, combined with strong commercial experience in .NET / C#. Front-end experience with modern JavaScript frameworks (React, Angular, Vue) is highly desirable. The Lead Associate - AI / .NET acts as a mentor for developers across the department and plays a critical role in elevating engineering maturity, enabling continuous improvement, and helping teams adopt emerging technologies responsibly. Key Responsibilities Architecture and Design Own and define Lead Associate - AI / .NET Application architecture in collaboration with Infrastructure and Solution Architects. Design secure, scalable, cloud-native systems that meet business requirements. Recommend tools, frameworks, patterns, and methods for application development and management. Break down complex change and technical challenges into manageable, deliverable components. Produce and maintain high-quality documentation describing system architecture, patterns, and design decisions. Technical Leadership & Delivery Provide expert technical direction to developers and delivery teams. Support teams in implementing solutions, ensuring architectural compliance and best practice. Advocate for engineering excellence, quality, maintainability, and performance. Identify technical issues early and propose pragmatic solutions to prevent future risks or failures. Advise on the adoption of new and emerging technologies, ensuring they add practical value. Collaboration & Stakeholder Engagement Explain architectural decisions and technical solutions clearly to technical and nontechnical stakeholders. Inform stakeholders (including Product Owners and clients) on progress, risks, and technical challenges. Work collaboratively with Product, Engineering, and Platform teams to ensure feasibility and alignment. Build trusted relationships across the department, acting as a role model for engineering standards. Innovation, Research & Continuous Improvement Evaluate and explore emerging technologies and cloud services with a view to incorporating them into future solutions. Recommend continuous improvements to systems, tooling, processes, and architecture. Promote modern engineering approaches such as automation, CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, and modern cloud patterns. Coaching & Mentoring Provide coaching and mentorship to less experienced developers. Support skill development across teams using the SFIA-based capability framework. Lead by example in professionalism, technical discipline, and collaboration. Skills, Knowledge and Expertise Experience with modern front-end JavaScript frameworks (React, Angular, or Vue). Experience with DevOps practices, CI/CD, automated testing, and container technologies. Exposure to messaging, orchestration, and cloud platform services. Strong commercial development experience with cloud-native applications (Azure, AWS, or GCP). Advanced proficiency in .NET / C# and associated server-side technologies. Understanding of modern architectural styles: microservices, event-driven design, domain-driven design, API-first architecture. Experience guiding teams through complex delivery and architectural change. Ability to design robust, scalable, secure solutions across distributed systems.