Embedded GCP Technical Architect - Contract - DV Cleared

MORELA Embedded GCP Technical Architect Long-term contract | Outside IR35| £900 per day |Central London | Active DV This is a long-term contract with a view to extend, Outside IR35, at £900 per day, with room to negotiate for the right candidate. It is based in Central London, 2 to 3 days a week on site, plus travel to customer sites. Active DV clearance is required. About the Client Morela is proud to be supporting a fast-growing, venture-backed UK AI company building sovereign AI for defence, government and other highly regulated sectors. Their core product is an AI operating system built for secure, air-gapped environments, and they are delivering at pace across high-profile government programmes. The client's identity will be shared on introduction. The Role You will be embedded with the client's defence and government customers as the technical architect who makes the platform work in their world. The platform runs today on Google Cloud. Your job is to design how it lands in each customer environment, from GCP and sovereign cloud through to Kubernetes, OpenShift, on-premises and air-gapped networks, and then lead the delivery that gets it deployed, integrated, accredited and accepted. You will own the architecture and the technical relationship from the first workshop with a customer's security authority through to handover. You will shape how the platform adapts to each environment and feed what you learn back to the core engineering team, while product architecture and roadmap stay with them. This is a hands-on role: you will still write code across the stack when delivery needs it. It suits a senior architect, Principal Engineer or former technical founder who is at home with GCP, still builds, and is comfortable leading senior MOD stakeholders. You will be part of a small, senior team working at the front line of sovereign AI in defence. Responsibilities

• Design target architectures for each customer deployment, adapting the platform's GCP-native design and managed services to the customer's infrastructure
• Lead delivery on the engagement end to end: requirements, feasibility, technical planning, deployment, troubleshooting and handover
• Lead technical workshops, design reviews and demonstrations with senior MOD, engineering and security stakeholders
• Produce the architecture documentation customers and accreditors need: HLDs, LLDs, network designs, interface specifications and assurance evidence
• Lead technical assurance, including architecture reviews, threat modelling and accreditation support
• Integrate the platform with customer data sources, APIs and systems
• Build across the full stack where delivery needs it and bring field insight back to engineering Essential Requirements
• DV clearance: Active DV held, not eligibility
• GCP: Deep, hands-on Google Cloud architecture experience (Cloud Run, Cloud SQL, IAM, networking, Secret Manager, Workload Identity Federation)
• GCP-to-anywhere: Experience designing for and moving cloud-native workloads onto Kubernetes, OpenShift, VMs, bare metal or on-premises infrastructure
• Full stack engineering, ideally TypeScript/Node.js, React and PostgreSQL, with experience of APIs and distributed systems
• Terraform, CI/CD and Docker
• A track record of leading technical delivery on client engagements, with confidence in front of senior security and engineering stakeholders
• Producing architecture and design documentation to a standard customers and accreditors accept Desirable Experience
• MOD or defence delivery, including air-gapped or classified environments
• Familiarity with MOD standards, information assurance and accreditation
• Security architecture: authentication, authorisation, multitenancy, encryption and secrets management
• AI/LLM systems in production, including agentic workflows and on-premise model serving
• Data integration with complex customer data models
• AWS or Azure, or GPU workloads Working Environment Central London, 2 to 3 days a week on site, plus travel to customer sites across the UK as programmes require. Some work takes place in secure facilities without personal devices or internet access. Outside IR35, £900 per day with room to negotiate for the right candidate, on a long-term contract with a view to extend. For immediate consideration email Kieran.sewell@morela.co.uk