Senior Technical Architect

Who We Are

VML, part of WPP, is a leading creative company that combines brand experience, customer experience, and commerce, creating connected brands to drive growth. VML is celebrated for its innovative and human first, award-winning work for blue chip client partners including AstraZeneca, Colgate-Palmolive, Dell, Ford, Microsoft, Nestlé, The Coca-Cola Company, and Wendy's. The agency is recognized by the Forrester Wave™ Reports, as a Leader among Marketing Creative and Content Service Providers, Commerce Services, Global Digital Experience Services, Global Marketing Services and, most recently, Marketing Measurement & Optimization. In addition, VML’s specialist health network, VML Health, is one of the world’s largest and most awarded health agencies. VML’s global network is powered by 26,000 talented people across 55+ markets, with principal offices in Kansas City, New York, Detroit, London, São Paulo, Shanghai, Singapore, and Sydney.

About WPP

WPP is the trusted growth partner for the world’s leading brands. We unite cutting-edge media intelligence and data solutions, world-class creativity, next-generation production, transformative enterprise solutions and expert strategic counsel in a single company – powered by exceptional talent and our agentic marketing platform, WPP Open, to help our clients navigate change, capture opportunity and deliver transformational growth. For more information, visit .

We are looking for a permanent Principal Technical Architect.

Our Commerce & Technology division helps leading global brands deliver digital experiences. As clients transition from AI experimentation to production-grade, autonomous agentic platforms (systems that plan, reason, act, and transact), we are seeking a Principal Technical Architect. Serving as the senior technical authority on our AWS and cloud engagements, you will own the design and quality of robust, scalable applications.

In this outward-facing, energetic leadership role, you will architect enterprise-grade cloud applications with a strong focus on agentic AI platform components—including orchestration, memory, tool integration, identity, guardrails, and observability—as well as emerging Agentic Commerce. Alongside driving technical strategy, you will actively partner with clients, lead dynamic workshops, participate in governance, and collaborate with commercial teams to identify and shape new growth opportunities. Balancing strategic vision with hands-on delivery, you will stay close to the code, prove technical solutions through rigorous code reviews, and mentor engineering teams to establish a high bar for quality, automation, and operational best practices.

What you’ll be doing

• Technical Leadership & Governance: Act as the account's senior authority on complex cloud architectures (esp. AWS serverless). Establish technical governance, design standards, and manage risk, non-functional requirements (NFRs), and technical debt.
• Agentic AI & Commerce Innovation: Design AWS-based agentic AI platforms (orchestration, RAG, memory, guardrails, and MCP). Establish reusable patterns and advise clients on emerging Agentic Commerce standards (ACP, AP2, A2A, and secure payment models).
• Client Engagement & Account Growth: Build trusted relationships with senior stakeholders, translate complex concepts, and facilitate technical discovery workshops. Proactively identify, shape, and pitch technical solutions to drive account growth.
• Hands-on Engineering & Delivery: Provide hands-on technical ownership by proving solutions, reviewing code, and designing robust API/integration patterns. Champion a quality-first mindset using Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC), CI/CD, and automation.
• Capability Building: Mentor engineers and architects, share knowledge on emerging technologies, and raise the overall technical bar across the account and practice.

What we want from you

• Leadership & Consulting: Senior/Principal architect with experience in digital agencies or consultancies, skilled at leading development teams, guiding clients through workshops, and identifying business growth opportunities.
• AWS & Serverless Architecture: Deep hands-on expertise in designing, documenting, and delivering resilient, high-availability enterprise applications on AWS (including serverless patterns and appropriate integration components).
• Agentic AI & Commerce: Strong understanding of building agentic AI platforms on AWS (e.g., Bedrock, orchestrations, RAG, gateways/MCP) and awareness of emerging Agentic Commerce concepts and standards (ACP, AP2, A2A).
• Software Engineering & API Design: Strong development background (ideally TypeScript/JavaScript) coupled with robust API design, documentation, and versioning experience.
• DevOps & Quality Automation: Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform/CDK/CloudFormation), CI/CD pipelines, and a strict quality-first mindset (unit testing, automated tooling).
• Communication & Collaboration: Proactive, energetic collaborator with excellent written, verbal, and diagrammatic skills capable of translating complex technical concepts for senior stakeholders.

If you know some of this, even better

• AWS Solutions Architect Professional (or Associate as a minimum)
• AWS Specialty certifications (e.g., Security, Data/ML)
• Familiarity with:
• The C4 model
• Diagrams-as-code
• DevOps practices
• Headless architectures
• Practical application of LLMs within enterprises

What we can offer you

Alongside the opportunity to work with some of the most exciting brands around the world, we’ll also prioritise your career development and help you grow your skills. We’ll empower you to make a difference, allow you to be yourself, and respect who you are.

Permanent only:
We offer a great benefits package including a discretionary bonus scheme, training opportunities, competitive pension, medical insurance, life assurance, social events, opportunities to buy and sell holidays, family friendly policies, discounts with hundreds of retailers and much more.

Our culture thrives on our core values, designed for impact-driven individuals: Heart, Brains and Courage.

We lead with  Heart , fostering empathy and trust where genuine connections and human-centric work flourish.
We empower your  Brains  for innovation, valuing relentless curiosity and collaborative intelligence to solve complex challenges.
And we champion  Courage , inspiring you to speak up, embrace experimentation, and advocate for bold solutions that push our thinking to be better than yesterday.

 

How we use AI in the recruitment process:

To ensure more focused and engaging conversations, we leverage AI in our recruitment process exclusively for secure, objective note-taking , never for evaluative judgments. This allows our team to be fully present with you. You are always welcome to request a transcript of these notes or opt out of this feature at any time. Opting out will not impact the outcome of the interview process "

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We believe the best work happens when we're together, fostering creativity, collaboration, and connection. That's why we’ve adopted a hybrid approach, with teams in the office an average of four days a week. If you require accommodations or flexibility, please discuss this with the hiring team during the interview process.

WPP (VML) is an equal opportunity employer and considers applicants for all positions without discrimination or regard to characteristics. We are committed to fostering a culture of respect in which everyone feels they belong and has the same opportunities to progress in their careers.

VML is a WPP agency (NYSE: WPP). For more information, please visit   , and follow along on Instagram ,  LinkedIn , and  X .

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