SOFTWARE ARCHITECT Data, Product and Technology Shoreditch, London

SOFTWARE ARCHITECT

We Realise Potential in Your Story

Based in the heart of Shoreditch, we are multi-platform production company, social media agency, and digital media network who are currently on a quest to find a Software Architect to join our Data, Tech & Product team. Is this your next opportunity?

We are looking for a hands on Software Architect to define, design, and help deliver a next-generation video content automation, scheduling and distribution platform used across our portfolio of 130+ YouTube channels. As the Software Architect, you will split your time between technical leadership (50%) - architecture, standards, planning, direction - and contributing code (50%) across backend services, automations, pipelines, and UI components. This will include working closely with the Product Owner, end users, and stakeholders across the business to translate complex operational workflows into scalable technical solutions. You will also directly manage a blend of onshore and offshore developers, ensuring clarity of tasks, code quality, and delivery velocity.

This is a strategic and highly technical role with real ownership and visible impact on the operations of the company. The ideal candidate will demonstrate a range of different skill sets to compliment this as we move through our strategic technology roadmap, such as hands on engineering, stakeholder engagement, leadership experience, and delivery management.

PERKS OF THE JOB

We are proud to be an award winning, B Corp Certified workplace with employee wellbeing at the heart of everything we do. We offer hybrid and flexi time working, mental health and wellbeing programmes, enhanced gender neutral parental leave, interest free financial support and a digital nomad policy that allows you to work from abroad in two one week blocks a year. Plus all the usuals such as pension contributions, annual leave and office perks like free lunches, socials, and health treatments!

HOW YOU'LL SPEND YOUR TIME Architecture & Technical Direction

• Defining the system architecture for our products, focussing on our scheduling and automation platform, spanning backend services, data pipelines, APIs, and UI layers.
• Setting technical standards for code quality, security, observability, CI/CD, and cloud deployment.
• Building and maintaining the architectural roadmap, ensuring scalability to >500 video uploads/week and multi channel automation workflows.
• Driving decisions on storage models, event flows, orchestration, API boundaries, and data schemas.
• Owning the technical implementation strategy for GCP based components (BigQuery, Firestore, Cloud Functions, Cloud Run, Pub/Sub, Composer/Airflow).
• Designing frameworks for automation, title processing, workflow orchestration, and validation pipelines.

Hands On Engineering

• Contributing production grade code in Python, TypeScript/React, and GCP environments.
• Building backend services (Cloud Run / Cloud Functions), data pipelines, scheduling engines, and workflow automations.
• Implementing UI components in React/Next.js for dashboards, scheduling calendars, and admin tooling.
• Optimising end to end performance of scheduling algorithms, metadata extraction flows, and content management workflows.

Stakeholder Engagement

• Collaborating with channel managers, editors, rights teams, and operations stakeholders to understand real world constraints.
• Participating in user interviews and feedback loops to validate product assumptions.
• Communicating technical trade offs and prioritisation clearly to non technical audiences.
• Supporting PM in roadmap planning, phased delivery, and discovery cycles.

Leadership & Delivery Management

• Working with the Director of Data, Tech & Product (DTP) and Partnerships Manager to define the backlog, scope projects, and break work into clear deliverables.
• Leading daily engineering operations across onshore and offshore teams, ensuring productivity and alignment.
• Reviewing and approving architecture proposals, pull requests, and system changes.
• Mentoring mid level developers, setting standards, and supporting their technical growth.
• Helping to coordinate QA and release processes, ensuring stable, safe rollouts.

WHAT YOU NEED TO SUCCEED

• Demonstrable experience of software engineering, including experience in senior or architect level roles.
• Strong hands on experience with Python, including building production APIs and async workflows.
• Solid experience with React / TypeScript for admin UIs and dashboards.
• Deep understanding of GCP, including: BigQuery, Firestore, Cloud Storage, Pub/Sub, Cloud Functions / Cloud Run, IAM & service accounts.
• Experience designing and scaling distributed systems, workflow engines, or scheduling/pipeline software.
• Strong SQL and data modelling skills, ideally with analytics and ETL familiarity.
• Demonstrated experience managing and coordinating offshore and onshore development teams.
• Ability to balance technical excellence with pragmatic delivery.

NICE TO HAVE

• Experience with media platforms, digital content pipelines, or YouTube CMS / YouTube API.
• Familiarity with ML/AI classification, embeddings, transcript based tagging, or automation first workflows.
• Exposure to Airflow / Dagster / Prefect for orchestration.
• Experience with high throughput scheduling or rules engines.

LITTLE DOT, BIG IMPACT

We're probably the biggest studio you didn't know was fuelling your favourite content. We've been one of the top dogs in the digital content space since 2013 (some would say, before its potential was even fully realised). We're proud to work with some of the hottest TV and movie studios, distributors, rights holders, sports federations and brands in the business.

WE ARE COMMITTED

We are committed to fostering a diverse, inclusive, and equitable workplace at Little Dot that reflects our diverse digital audiences and communities we work and live in. We are committed to ensuring every employee feels valued and empowered to contribute their unique perspectives. We welcome candidates of all backgrounds, experiences, and identities to apply to our vacancies, and we strive to create an environment where differences are celebrated, and everyone has equal opportunity to thrive.

Learn more about us, our values and our commitments please visit our website for more information.