Senior Principal - EUC / MDM Platform Architect

Business Introduction GSK remains committed to achieving bold commercial ambitions for the future. By 2031, we aim to deliver £40 billion in annual sales, leveraging our existing strong performance momentum to significantly increase our positive impact on the health of billions of patients globally. Our Ahead Together strategy is centred on early intervention to prevent and alter the course of disease, thereby protecting people and supporting healthcare systems. Our diverse portfolio consists of vaccines, specialty medicines, and general medicines. Through continuous innovation and a dedicated focus on scientific and technical excellence, we strive to develop and launch new, groundbreaking treatments that address critical health challenges. Job Purpose     Be the definitive technical authority for how 50,000+ employees across [X] countries experience and interact with their devices. This role owns the architecture, reference designs, technical standards and engineering direction for the entire end user computing estate — laptops, desktops, mobiles, tablets, virtual desktops, meeting rooms, and specialised or regulated endpoints.  Where the Director owns delivery, budget and people, the Principal Architect owns what good looks like technically and holds the organisation to it. This is a hands-on-capable role: the expectation is to prototype, prove and pressure-test designs personally, not solely to review other people's slides.  The Principal Architect is accountable for ensuring the estate is secure by design, cloud-native, automatable, cost-efficient and — critically — genuinely pleasant to use. They are the person who says no to architecture that will not survive contact with 50,000 users, and who can explain why in terms both engineers and executives accept.  Key Responsibilities   Own the target-state architecture for end user computing: platform selection, device management topology, identity integration, application delivery, security control placement and telemetry.  Produce and maintain reference architectures, design patterns, technical standards and architecture decision records (ADRs) — with trade-offs made explicit rather than buried.  Define the technical roadmap that underpins the EUC strategy: platform migrations, deprecations, convergence of fragmented tooling, and the sequencing that makes it deliverable.  Continuously evaluate the market — modern management, AI PCs and on-device inference, cloud PC/DaaS economics, zero-trust endpoint models — and separate genuine capability from vendor narrative.  Act as the design authority for all endpoint change: chair or sit on the EUC architecture review board, approve significant designs, and hold veto on standards deviation.  Set and police the exception process — make the right path the easy path, and make deviations visible, time-bound and owned.  Review and assure supplier and MSP technical designs; ensure partners build to the organisation's architecture rather than their own delivery convenience.  Set engineering standards for configuration-as-code, packaging, testing, release management and rollback across the endpoint estate.  Prototype and prove new capability in a lab before it reaches production; build the reference implementation the engineering teams then industrialise.  Mentor and technically develop senior engineers and platform leads; raise the ceiling of the whole team, not just your own output.  Partner with Cyber Security to embed zero-trust principles at the endpoint: device trust and attestation, conditional access, least privilege, application control, EDR and DLP placement.  Architect for regulated and validated environments — GxP-qualified endpoints, computer system validation (CSV/CSA), data residency and privacy obligations, and audit/SOX ITGC evidence generation as a designed-in property rather than a manual scramble.  Own the technical response to endpoint-relevant threat scenarios and drive architectural remediation of systemic vulnerabilities.  Architect the digital employee experience (DEX) telemetry model: what is measured, how it is collected, where it lands, and how it drives automated remediation.  Design for self-healing and self-service by default; treat every recurring ticket category as an architectural defect until proven otherwise.  Translate architecture into business consequence for senior stakeholders — cost, risk, productivity, time-to-value.  Represent EUC architecture in enterprise architecture forums, security governance, and vendor executive briefings.  Professional Qualifications   Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related technical discipline, or equivalent demonstrable professional expertise.  Relevant certifications desirable (e.g., Microsoft Certified: Endpoint Administrator Expert, Azure Solutions Architect Expert, Cybersecurity Architect Expert, Jamf Certified Expert, TOGAF, CISSP or SABSA).  Area of Specialisation   End user computing architecture at global enterprise scale — platform selection, device management topology, identity integration, application delivery and telemetry.  Modern endpoint management (Intune/MECM) and macOS management (Jamf), including co-management, hybrid-to-cloud-native migration and staged ring-based rollout.  Endpoint security architecture and zero-trust design — device trust, conditional access, application control, EDR/XDR, DLP and secure baselines.  Regulated and validated endpoint environments — GxP-qualified endpoints, CSV/CSA, data residency and audit/SOX ITGC evidence generation designed in.  Experience Required   Overall 15 years and 12+ years in IT infrastructure or end user computing, including 5+ years in a principal, lead or enterprise architect capacity with recognised design authority.  Architecture ownership for an endpoint estate of 20,000+ devices across multiple countries and regulatory jurisdictions.  Expert-level, hands-on-derived command of modern endpoint management (Intune/MECM) and macOS management — sufficient to build the reference implementation personally, not only to specify it.  Demonstrable advanced scripting and automation portfolio; evidence of configuration-as-code applied to a production endpoint estate.  Working fluency in enterprise endpoint security and zero-trust architecture, with a track record of co-designing controls alongside a Cyber Security function.  Led the architecture of at least one large-scale endpoint platform migration or transformation through to production, including the failures and what was learned from them.  Able to produce architecture documentation of a standard that withstands external audit and supplier scrutiny.  Proven credibility with both senior engineers and executive stakeholders, in English, in a global matrixed organisation.  Willingness to travel internationally, approximately [5–15]% of the time.  Desirable:  Experience in a regulated industry — pharmaceutical, life sciences, biotech, financial services or healthcare — with practical GxP/CSV/CSA and Annex 11 / 21 CFR Part 11 exposure.  Architecture for specialised endpoints: laboratory instrument workstations, manufacturing and shop-floor devices, clinical and field devices, kiosks, shared and multi-user workstations.  Leading a major platform transformation: SCCM-to-Intune migration, Windows 10→11 at scale, MSP transition, or M&A integration/divestment of an endpoint estate.  Sustainability-aware design — device longevity, power management, refurbishment and Scope 3 implications of architectural choices.  Accessibility and assistive technology designed into the standard build rather than bolted on.  Network fundamentals relevant to endpoints — SASE/ZTNA, split tunnelling, Wi-Fi 6/7, certificate-based network access.  Contribution to the wider community — open-source tooling, conference speaking, published technical writing, vendor customer advisory boards.  Skills/Background   Deep technical breadth across Window