Platform Architecture Team Lead

About Us

YouLend is the preferred global embedded financing platform for many of the world's leading e-commerce sites, tech companies and payment services providers such as Amazon, eBay, Shopify, Mollie, Dojo, Paysafe, Just Eat Takeaway and Takepayments. Our software platform and APIs enable our partners to offer flexible financing products, in their desired branding, to their merchant base. With YouLend's AI-driven credit risk assessment solutions, more merchants and SMEs than ever can receive fast, flexible and affordable funding. We operate in 9+ geographies across the UK, EU and the US.

We believe that the future of financial services will be delivered by customer-oriented tech companies that embed financing in their customer journeys, and we are building the solutions that will power that future.  YouLend is an authorised payment institution in the UK, and are actively looking to expand their regulatory presence.

The Role:

We are seeking an experienced Platform Architecture Team Lead to lead a high-performing team of engineers and architects responsible for the design, implementation, and optimization of our  Platform, with a focus on AWS, Terraform, and Kubernetes for infrastructure side, and C# and Typescript for platform development. The ideal candidate will possess strong technical expertise in cloud infrastructure, automation, orchestration, and software development, testing, along with proven leadership skills. You will guide the team to build scalable, reliable, and secure infrastructure while enabling agile application development and delivery. 

Key Responsibilities: 

Leadership & Team Management: 

• Lead and mentor a team of infrastructure engineers and architects in developing cloud infrastructure solutions. 

• Drive collaboration across cross-functional teams, including DevEnablement, security, and application development, ensuring alignment with business goals. 

• Foster a culture of continuous improvement, technical excellence, and innovation within the team. 

• Lead and mentor the Scrum methodology, manages Scrum ceremonies, planning sprints and team goals. Motivates the team to engage in Scrum collaboration. 

Platform Architecture Design & Implementation: 

• Cloud first mentality. Architect, design, and implement scalable cloud infrastructure and software architecture on AWS utilizing best practices for security, cost-efficiency, and performance. 

• Implement and manage infrastructure as code (IaC) using Terraform, Pullumi or CloudFormation, ensuring consistency, reusability, and version control of infrastructure resources. 

• Lead the development and management of Kubernetes clusters for orchestrating containerized workloads, ensuring high availability and scalability. 

• Implement frameworks for a high availability and scalable microservice architecture, ensuring high availability and scalability providing leadership to other business software teams 

Automation & Process Improvement: 

• Drive the automation of infrastructure provisioning, configuration management, and application deployment pipelines using CI/CD methodologies. 

• Work closely with other Platform teams to improve automation, monitoring, and incident response processes for the cloud environment. 

Security & Compliance: 

• Ensure security best practices are integrated into all architecture designs, including identity and access management (IAM), network security, and encryption. 

• Collaborate with security teams to ensure infrastructure is compliant with regulatory requirements, such as SOC2, HIPAA, or GDPR. 

• Lead the other software teams in the development of secure software frameworks. 

Cost Management & Optimization: 

• Optimize cloud resources and implement cost-saving strategies across the infrastructure, including AWS cost management tools and resource monitoring. 

• Continuously review and analyse infrastructure usage and performance, implementing improvements and adjustments as needed. 

Stakeholder Engagement: 

• Collaborate with leadership, product, and otherengineering teams to define infrastructure roadmaps and align them with business objectives. 

• Act as a technical advisor to stakeholders on cloud infrastructure trends and best practices, keeping up to date with industry developments. 

Required Skills and Experience: 

• Proven experience leading or managing a technical infrastructure or cloud team. 

• Expert-level knowledge of AWS (VPC, EC2, EKS, S3, RDS, IAM, Lambda, etc.) with practical experience in designing large-scale cloud solutions. 

• Proven experience developing systems with C#, Typescript and Python languages. 

• Proven experience developing Single Page Web Applications, API’s and back-end applications 

• Strong experience with Terraform, Pulumi  for infrastructure automation and orchestration. 

• Extensive experience with Kubernetes for container orchestration, including deploying and managing clusters in a production environment. 

• Proficiency in CI/CD pipelines and tooling (e.g., Jenkins, GitLab CI, CircleCI). 

• Familiarity with monitoring and logging tools (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, DataDog). 

• Strong understanding of cloud security best practices, including IAM, firewall configurations, and network segmentation. 

• Experience with cloud cost management and optimization strategies. 

• Excellent problem-solving skills, with a proactive and innovative approach to addressing infrastructure challenges. 

• Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to interact with both technical and non-technical stakeholders. 

Preferred Qualifications: 

• AWS certification (e.g., AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional or Associate). 

• Experience with additional infrastructure as code tools like Pulumi, CloudFormation or Ansible. 

• Knowledge of multi-cloud strategies and hybrid cloud solutions. 

• Experience in agile methodologies and DevOps principles. 

Education: 

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field (or equivalent experience). 

Why join YouLend?

• Award-Winning Workplace: YouLend has been recognised as one of the "Best Places to Work 2024" by the Sunday Times for being a supportive, diverse, and rewarding workplace
• Award-Winning Fintech: YouLend has been recognised as a "Top 250 Fintech Worldwide" company by CNBC
  

We offer comprehensive benefits package that includes:

• Stock Options
• Private Medical insurance via Vitality
• EAP with Health Assured
• Enhanced Maternity and Paternity Leave
• Modern and sophisticated office space in Central London
• Free Gym in office building in Holborn
• Subsidised Lunch via Feedr
• Deliveroo Allowance if working late in office
• Monthly in office Masseuse
• Team and Company Socials
• Football Power League / Squash Club
  

At YouLend, we champion diversity and embrace equal opportunity employment practices. Our hiring, transfer, and promotion decisions are exclusively based on qualifications, merit, and business requirements, free from any discrimination based on race, gender, age, disability, religion, nationality, or any other protected basis under applicable law.