Principal Architect

The Role

Contract: Permanent

Role:

We are seeking a highly skilled and motivated Enterprise Architect to lead the development and implementation of enterprise-wide technology strategies that align with our organisation's overall strategic objectives. The successful candidate will have experience designing and implementing complex enterprise architectures, utilising both technical and business expertise to drive growth and transformation.

As a Principal Enterprise Architect, you will be at the heart of our ambition to help transform and grow our business. This role is helping stakeholders to shape innovative solutions which deliver results. We are looking for an individual who has a proven track record of aligning target business vision and requirements with enterprise solutions by collaborating with wider stakeholders to identify the target state blueprints and architecture vision for the enterprise. Someone who has deep knowledge of architectural standards, an effective governance approach, patterns for enterprise architecture with the ability to develop enterprise strategies and processes.

Our business operates across multiple territories and teams, and this role offers the opportunity to build experience and bring your wealth of technology

expertise to stakeholders in new and diverse projects, each with their own unique set of challenges.

The role requires excellent business and technology understanding, as well as experience in technology strategy and selection. We are seeking candidates who can evidence a broader consulting skill set. This role will be based out of the UK with flexible working arrangements. This role requires travel from time-to-time to multiple UK locations.

The primary objective of this role is to bring clarity, consistency, and decision making to a complex landscape by defining a target and transition architecture, aligning business processes, workflows, architecture and engineering, in order to drive simplification across systems and processes.

This role provides technology direction and governance, including defining transformation approaches (process-led or workflow-led), drive decision-making through impact assessments, and ensure consistent design standards and validation practices across teams. The aims are to develop a clear and agreed target and phased architecture, alignment across the Target Operating Model, a trusted architecture roadmap, providing the input into delivery with aligned ways of working, between SA, BA along with consistent decision-making

Responsibilities:

1. Strategic Planning & Vision

• Develop and maintain the organisation's enterprise architecture roadmap, ensuring alignment with business goals and objectives, and take a lead role in owning a dimension relating to a business domain.
• Contribute to an enterprise architecture strategy that enables value and growth across the business.
• Develop target state architectures and transition plans to achieve the organisation's strategic goals.
• Shape and document ITV’s Technology strategy and agree a realisable roadmap to deliver value little and often. Consolidate process plans, solution architecture plans, and capability plans into a single, trusted, and unified roadmap.

2. Architecture Development & Governance and Decisions

• Develop and maintain enterprise architecture artifacts, including business capability models, technology reference models, solution architectures, and roadmaps with reusable architecture patterns for current and future projects
• Lead the development of business architecture blueprints and roadmaps that align with the organisation's overall strategic objectives.Define and communicate the target state architecture and interim states.
• Provide impact assessments to drive decision-making and provide oversight of solution design validation and integration guidance to teams.
• Ensure technical debt is understood, documented, and accepted by stakeholders. Lead Partner with Delivery leadership to execute legacy application retirement, directly supporting current and future business cases.
• Design and develop policies, standards, guidelines, roadmaps, and strategy that affect the selection, design, development, implementation, maintenance, and use of technology. Ensure compliance with industry best practices, regulatory requirements, and security standards and maintain architectural integrity across all delivery teams.
• Define high-level enterprise target states and integration patterns, collaborating with Domain Directors and/or Technical Working Groups who retain delivery architecture authority.
• Ensure architectural design commences alongside or subsequent to clearly defined Target Operating Models (TOM) and business processes. Maintain alignment between strategic intent, the Target Operating Model, and delivery execution and govern the architectural roadmap..
• Ensure designs leverage commodity tooling and reduce complex, bespoke human interfaces.

3. Stakeholder Collaboration & Consultation

• Collaborate with stakeholders across the organisation to provide Technology consultancy services into the business, ensuring right levels of support, coordination, and engagement to analyse business and technical requirements. Act as the senior architecture authority across Engineering, Architecture, BAs, and the Business.
• Work closely with the Business, Directors of Technology, and Technology leads to coordinate successfully defined outcomes to ensure that solution architecture and designs are driven fundamentally by validated business processes and requirements.
• Communicate business architecture concepts and strategies to executive leadership and other stakeholders.
• Partner with Capability Leads to ensure business design reflects operational needs, and that technology solutions directly support core processes and a driver of a simplification strategy.
• Coordinate dependency mapping and decommissioning activities across Engineering, Architecture, and BAs.

4. Analysis & Problem Solving

• Conduct current state assessments and identify gaps and opportunities for improvement in business processes and systems.
• Provide insight through analysis and knowledge of best practices to solve complex problems.
• Explain technology trends and vendor roadmaps in terms of business impact.

5. Project Leadership & Implementation

• Work with the Chief Architect on the effective management and delivery of complex architecture solutions, and contribute to enterprise architecture strategy that enables value and growth.
• Shape and document ITV’s Technology strategy, agreeing on a realisable roadmap to deliver value iteratively. Develop a clear and agreed target
• and phased architecture, alignment across the Target Operating Model, a trusted architecture roadmap.
• Drive governance and aligned ways of working, between solution architecture, and analysis to improve consistent decision-making
• Provide guidance and leadership to cross-functional teams, including project managers, business analysts, and solution architects, technical leads to ensure successful implementation of business solutions
• Own and establish enterprise contract standards and integration guidelines to assist cross-functional Product Teams (BAs, SAs, PMs) in agile solution design.
• Work closely with business and technology teams to plan and implement the migration from current to new state.
• Communicate business architecture concepts to executive leadership.

6. Innovation & Industry Insight

• Identify new technologies which can make a material impact on the sector and competitive advantage.
• Drive thought leadership and innovation across the organisation.
• Developing proposals and providing subject matter expertise in response to requirements, explaining technology trends and vendor roadmaps in terms for business impact.

Skills Required:

• At least 5+ years experience working in the enterprise architecture space with detailed proven delivery expertise in developing change through EA.
• Demonstrated ability to design and implement complex enterprise architectures, including technology reference models, solution architectures, and infrastructure roadmaps
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to communicate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences
• Building and managing peer relationships.
• Strong leadership skills, with the ability to lead cross-functional teams and influence executive decision-making
• Certification in enterprise architecture (e.g. TOGAF) preferred with focus on value streams, capability modelling and continuous delivery and domain driven architectures..
• Knowledge of and ability to frame key business and technology trends within the context of the objectives. Ability to identify the potential implications and impacts of the associated trends.
• Knowledge of organisational, industry leading practice and market relevant standards
• Knowledge of and ability to use methods and tools to develop a roadmap for the future state of technology which aligns the architecture and processes with business strategies and objectives.

Ideally, you’ll also have

• Knowledge of Cloud (Microsoft Azure, AWS or Google) in the context of enterprise architecture and domain reference models.
• Knowledge of Enterprise Platforms and how they fit in context of enterprise architecture and domain reference models.
• Very good written and verbal communication, presentation, service and technical writing skills
• Confidence to support meetings with stakeholders, management, and individual contributors.
• Experience of working with cross functional teams and agile ways of working
• Experience in leading large scale delivery expertise in cloud data / programmes of work