About Us
Renaissance® is a global leader in education technology. We help schools and school groups in the UK and around the world with educational assessments, practice and intervention solutions, and data analytics. Renaissance now incorporates GL Assessment (known internationally as GL Education), too – a leading provider of educational assessments.
Together, our assessments offer the ideal starting point to help teachers understand their students’ strengths and pinpoint areas of need. Our teaching and learning tools then provide effective next steps, with online literacy and maths solutions that meet students exactly where we are.
Worldwide, we support over 18 million students, operating in over 100 countries.
We're on a transformative journey toward an AI-enabled, platform-centric future, and we need a visionary Principal Architect to lead our technical evolution across our Global Technology function.
This is a high-impact leadership role where you'll define our technical direction, establish smart governance, and unite our architecture across platforms, products, and services. You won't be stuck in the delivery trenches—instead, you'll be the strategic voice that facilitates collaboration, sets standards, and drives the technical decisions that matter most.
Your Impact:
- Create architecture principles, standards, and governance frameworks that enable speed and innovation—not red tape
- Build effective architecture review forums and decision-making processes that drive clarity and accountability
- Own and shape the technical roadmap that brings our business and product strategy to life
- Identify game-changing opportunities, tackle technical debt, flag platform risks, and lead modernization efforts
- Be the connector: bring together subject matter experts across Engineering, Infrastructure, Security, Data, QA, and Product
- Facilitate collaborative problem-solving on the most complex technical challenges
- Serve as the technical bridge between our regional and US-based teams
- Represent our regional needs in global platform discussions and ensure our voice is heard
- Drive AI-enabled development and foster a culture of technical innovation and excellence
✨ What We're Looking For:
- Proven track record in senior architecture or technical leadership roles within SaaS or product-led organizations
- Deep expertise in software engineering, distributed systems, APIs, and cloud-native architectures
- Success establishing architecture governance and technical standards across multiple teams
- Experience influencing technical direction without direct authority—you lead through expertise and trust
- Ability to work seamlessly across Engineering, Infrastructure, Security, Data, QA, and Product teams
- History of defining technical roadmaps aligned with business objectives
- Experience in complex, multi-team, or globally distributed organizations
Key Skills:
- Exceptional communicator—you translate technical complexity into clarity for any audience
- Master facilitator—you drive discussions to decisions and create accountability
- Strategic yet pragmatic—you balance big-picture vision with delivery reality
Nice to Have:
- Experience in EdTech or SaaS environments
The Details:
Hybrid – Houghton Le Spring office (couple of days per week in-person collaboration) with flexibility tailored to you with some travel to other offices.
Also happy to discuss remote with some travel to Houghton.
Why You'll Love Working Here:
- Take your birthday off
- 5 volunteering days to give back to causes you care about ❤️
- Top-tier benefits: BUPA Healthcare, Life Assurance, Permanent Health Insurance
- Up to 8% employer pension contribution
- Workplace Nursery Scheme for families
- Thousands of discounts on retail, leisure, dining & more
- Season ticket loan & Employee Assistance Programme
- Christmas shutdown included
We have an ongoing commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and have taken strides to become a more welcoming and inclusive workplace, including the introduction of our DEI Matters Network which is owned and driven by our staff.
We are an equal opportunities employer. We encourage and welcome applications from all underrepresented groups, as we believe and strive for community representation within our organisation.
If you have a disability and would prefer to apply in a different format or would like us to make reasonable adjustments to enable you to apply or attend any interview, please contact us and we will talk this through with you.
All your information will be kept confidential according to GDPR guidelines. Please note that we can only consider applicants who already hold a full work permit.
This role is subject to DBS and background checks.
