My role as a Technical Architect by Navin Sadarangani

'Is a Technical Architect someone that designs buildings, Dad?' asked one of my children last week. They had been learning about architecture and architects in school. I explained that architects design buildings. I design software and services. I explained that whilst many architects specialise in specific types of briefs, for example, residential or commercial, I am fortunate in that I get to work on a variety of projects. And that's where the challenge lies.

Owning the technical solution

A Technical Architect typically takes ownership of the technical solution being developed and delivered. It is important to be decisive since many challenges come your way. My role is to bridge the gap between the business team, which includes Business Analysis (BA), User Experience (UX), product owners, and developers/testers. It is my job to make the project delivery as seamless as possible. To add value, a Technical Architect would usually get their hands dirty in any areas needed, not just in development but also DevOps, infrastructure setup and performance tuning.

A Technical Architect will not necessarily just be involved in development and delivery of projects. Their expertise is also called upon in discovery and pre-development phases such as planning, requirement analysis and prototype-design.

My path to being a Technical Architect

Throughout my career, I have worked as a developer with increasing levels of seniority. I was quite lucky to be supported in my previous role at Harvey Nichols to go on a TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework) course. TOGAF Certification is given to students who can demonstrate their skills and experience using the TOGAF Standards, which have been designed for organising business architecture on an enterprise level.

TOGAF gave me an invaluable outlook. It formalised the work I was already doing. I had worked on some ambitious projects, supported by talented technical teams. I found myself adding more value to the architecture and designing space. Doing a lot of integration work and using ETL tools and API platforms like Mulesoft gave me the diversity I needed.

My exposure as a Technical Architect, gained momentum after I joined Triad. Working on different domains and government standards nailed it further.

We don't have departments within Triad. You could say we are classified by our skill set and current client placement. As a Technical Architect, you are only as good as the team you have around you. I am very lucky to have worked with a multifaceted and highly talented team at Triad. I learn a lot from working with them daily. Triad also has a Communities of Practice where all the technical specialists meet monthly to share insights and learnings from client engagements to aid cross-community learning. We have access to Udemy courses, which is useful for topping up skills. And I follow some senior figures in the technology world so that I can learn from their advice and insights.

Each project offers a different set of challenges

In 2023, I completed a challenging project that went on to win three nationally recognised awards: UX Project of the Year at the 2023 UK IT Industry Awards, Digital Transformation of the Year at the 2024 Digital Technology Leaders Awards and Reg Tech of the Year at the 2024 National Technology Awards. This was for our work delivering the Road-Transport Fuel Obligation Mandate System (ROS) for the Department for Transport. Worth £2.7bn to the industry, the system is essential to the UK's commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. It was complex. We were under pressure. And if you'd told me at the start that we'd be a multi-award winning team, I'd have laughed at you and told you to cut back on the coffee!

After that, I worked on something completely different. It was a short discovery project at the Office for Product Safety & Standards (OPSS), where our brief was to consolidate and improve their systems without the premium of a new platform.

I am now back with some of my ROS project colleagues, working on a new mandate towards carbon emissions under the name 'Sustainable Aviation Fuels Mandate' (SAF). We are extending ROS to support the SAF mandate, which will launch in 2025. The team structure is flat, so I could do some architectural, design or document work for one sprint before pivoting to the next to work as a developer or with Quality Assurance (QA) on our automation test suite.

These examples of my work sum up what I love about my job. It is diverse and challenging. I get to work with cross-functional teams, and I can add value by being hands-on.

If you have a question for Navin or the Triad team, please get in touch.

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