Principal Enterprise Architect
London/York (hybrid)
Salary: Up to £120,000 + bonus & excellent benefits
About the Role
We’re searching for an experienced Enterprise Architect to help shape the technology landscape of a highly respected, international insurance group, known for innovation and market leadership. As a Principal Enterprise Architect you will lead strategic architecture decisions, define and promote architectural roadmaps, and ensure technology solutions align with business goals.
As a key member of the Architecture function, you will be responsible for setting the technical vision and governance standards, enabling seamless integration of business and technology. While this role has a strong strategic element, it also requires hands-on involvement, working closely with business leaders, technology teams, and solution architects to ensure successful delivery of innovative and scalable enterprise solutions.
We also welcome applications from experienced Solution Architects who are looking to transition into an Enterprise Architecture role.
Key Responsibilities
- Setting and maintaining the organisation’s enterprise architecture approach and strategy, creating innovative and actionable plans, guiding and contributing to current projects and programmes to measure effectiveness of programs and return of investment goals
- Accountable for specifying technical standards and patterns that assist in developing a secure, scalable governance and operating model
- Selecting technologies within a layered domain architecture to meet information technology and business requirements
- Design standards, frameworks, and processes to support and facilitate projects for the enterprise
- Create the high-level architecture strategy and guide implementation teams on the choice of components, standards, and patterns to use in the design and implementation phases
- Providing effective and proactive support and expertise to programmes and projects, ensuring that solution design is consistent and aligned with the architectural integration approach and roadmap, optimising solution delivery and business benefits
- Providing support in the creation and implementation of transition architectures, ensuring solutions are migrated and delivered in line with Enterprise Architecture approach and roadmap
- Interpret and contextualise business requirements into scalable and manageable solution and design specifications that align with the overall business vision
- Advise technical teams on performance, scalability, reliability, monitoring, and other operational concerns over integration solutions on the live platforms
- Works closely with Solution Architecture/Designers to ensure consistency and quality of solutions and knowledge sharing
- Lead, advocate, and drive adoption of “best practices” to ensure the standardisation of integration architecture outputs across the enterprise architecture function through the architecture governance processes and bodies (Architecture Review Board and Technical Design Authority)
- Document and maintain all architectural artefacts and provide support to all business and assemble all system components.
- Manage engagement with 3rd Party entities (vendors/partners/consultancies), where necessary, through RFI and/or RFP processes or any other company approved process
- Play a pivotal role in the formulation of short/medium/long term Enterprise Architecture strategies and ensure their alignment with and effective support of the company’s strategic business objectives
What We’re Looking For
Must Haves:
- 5+ years at a Solution Architecture or an Enterprise Architecture role coupled with extensive senior stakeholder engagement experience and business administration and commercial/financial awareness and proven approaches to requirements soliciting and requirements prioritising in line with business strategic objectives
- Experience integrating with Cloud/SaaS applications, APIs, and legacy applications with a strong understanding on how integration has evolved towards being a digital, cloud and API driven capability
- Experience with the evaluation and selection of new technologies based on the supplied requirements including managing proof of concepts or ‘spikes’ to validate if a considered technology is capable of delivering against the requirements
- Worked in mixed vendor multi-cloud environments
- Good communication skills, including the ability to communicate to both technical and business stakeholders in plain language
- Team management, coaching and mentoring and leveraging teams’ competencies/capabilities across the enterprise architecture function
- Qualified to degree level or possessing the relevant professional experience and working knowledge of core enterprise architecture domains with particular focus on cloud-based architectures
Desirable:
- Experience of developing enterprise-wide architectures within an Enterprise Architecture Framework, e.g. TOGAF would be an advantage
- Operational processes efficiency improvements through automation and process design/redesign an advantage
- IT cost optimisations through Enterprise Applications Rationalisation Programmes an advantage
- Knowledge and experience of build, deployment, change and release processes and automation an advantage.
If you’re ready to take the lead in shaping enterprise architecture strategies and delivering transformative business solutions, apply now or contact gail.still@cvmpeople.com
