Purpose of the Role

• Maintain a holistic view of enterprise IT capabilities, through the strategic definition of enterprise-wide business and application architecture, ensuring it supports the strategic requirements of the business.
• Ensure strategic transformational change is embedded within the company aligned with the Tech, influencing and leveraging relationships to gain buy-in of internal and external stakeholders.
• Drive the enterprise architecture thought leadership, effectively navigating through the conflicting stakeholder requirements of business strategy, transformation and technology direction to define the future state.
• Establish robust enterprise governance, leveraging key relationships to underpin the successful delivery of major architectural initiatives.
• Management of key supplier relationships, ensuring any third-party deliverables meet strategic, technical and cost requirements. Understand the product roadmap, identifying opportunities to enhance business capability, managing agreed deliverables.
• Identification and execution of continual improvement opportunities, ensuring the best outcomes for the business, driving optimal solutions through the implementation of the architecture roadmap.
• Develop and maintain relationships within the Group and externally to identify and promote best practice and industry trends, translating these into strategy, policies, standards and best practice.
• As required as the team grows, provide leadership to a team of Architects.

Principal Accountabilities/Responsibilities

• Provide architecture expertise to drive the enterprise domain architecture vision and direction.
• Provide direction to enterprise and solution architects to help ensure best in class solutions minimising customisation, seeking alignment with the business and leveraging the support of Tech resources.
• Ensure consistency of the enterprise architecture through breadth (and where necessary depth) of knowledge. Identification of opportunities for strategic business, information and technology change.
• Partner with enterprise and solution architects to ensure adherence to architectural principles, standards, best practice and roadmaps.
• Act as the bridge between Business Enterprise Architecture, Business Capabilities/Cloud & Platforms & Delivery/Product managers to ensure business, information and technology architecture are consistent. Identify cross portfolio dependencies and issues and act to resolve them.
• Co-ordinate activity to help deliver transformational change through the major overhaul of architectural domains, applications and services in line with Tech.
• Support with major transformational change projects across the company and Tech, influencing to ensure the right enterprise architecture solutions.
• Collaborate through a trusted business partnering approach, proactively leveraging key relationships to ensure business, information and technology enterprise architecture is strategically aligned
• Ensure project/product designs are consistent with the architecture and meet both functional and non-functional requirements. Drive resolution of architecture issues throughout the project or product lifecycle.
• Build key supplier relationships, where third-party work or packages involve significant architectural design decisions.
• Provide leadership and coaching to other architects
• Deliver across a number of business/technical domains and value-streams, the breadth and complexity of which will vary depending on experience.

Essential Qualifications/Experience

• Bachelor’s Degree in Management Information Systems, Computer Science or equivalent formal training; required.
• Demonstrable experience of leading complex enterprise architecture solutions.
• Senior level IT leadership, gained in a complex global organisation
• Senior business partnering, providing design support to major projects, working as a valued partner with senior stakeholders and strategic third parties across a diverse operation
• Proven track record of successful stakeholder management at a senior level, with the ability to influence and persuade across the Group or in a diverse global environment.
• Broad exposure to the full application lifecycle, ensuring effective use of industry best practice and/or methodologies.
• Awareness of and involvement in the evolution of worldwide architecture trends and practice.
• Experience of, and contribution to, applicable industry best practice, leading and shaping further development.
• Experience of operating across multiple countries and cultures is desirable.

Essential competencies/skills

• Strong leadership with a proven ability of influencing and persuading internally and externally
• Effective senior stakeholder management, balancing and finding compromises between opposing views and opinions
• Business partnering influencing, using architectural artefacts and enterprise/domain knowledge and expertise.
• Problem solving & and understanding of the broader business context (business acumen)
• Flexibility in a rapidly changing and developing environment, with the ability to work under pressure
• Innovation - transforming industry trends into practical, cost effective, secure, scalable and supportable solutions
• Fluent in English, both written and spoken
• Eligible to live and work in the EU
• Be in possession of or be able to obtain an airside security pass
• Hold a current unrestricted worldwide passport

Desirable Criteria

• Experience working within Architectural frameworks and standards such as TOGAF, IASA, ArchiMate or hold equivalent certifications
• Previous experience or knowledge of cloud-based technologies in particular AWS
• Experience with applying architecture in an agile/product-centric environment. E.g., SAFe