Principal Architect

Location: London, Potters Bar, Brsitol or Isle of Man (Hybrid working options available)

Are you a visionary with deep technical skills in cloud and modern architecture? Do you have a strong business understanding, ideally in the financial services industry? Are you experienced in leading architectural transformations that support agility, scalability, and compliance? If so, we want you to join our team.As a Principal Architect, you will take an overarching view across the whole organization, understanding our goals and enabling the business through technology. Reporting to the Head of Architecture and Strategy, you will collaborate with senior IT leaders, key business stakeholders, and architects to make pragmatic, commercially driven decisions that satisfy business objectives. You will be accountable for the development and delivery of key platform or technology roadmaps and strategies within a line of business.

Key Responsibilities

• Understand technology needs and propose solutions to meet business strategy.
• Lead the definition of IT strategies and solutions, creating and implementing technical solutions that meet client needs.
• Define, review, and maintain architectures, ensuring compliance with development, security, or infrastructure standards.
• Resolve significant technology and design issues through all project phases.
• Ensure solutions meet operational requirements and quality standards.
• Provide leadership within the IT and Change Division, championing IT processes, best practices, and standards.
• Ensure alignment of technology solutions across the organization and understand technology dependencies between projects.
• Lead cloud and application transformations, with a strong emphasis on Azure, to support agility, scalability, and compliance.

What We’re Looking For

• Extensive SME knowledge in tech applicable to business areas such as platforms, financial systems, legal systems, HR systems, contact management systems, and policy administration systems.
• Ability to translate technical concepts between software engineering, delivery management, and service management.
• Expertise in making and guiding effective decisions, resolving technical disputes, and turning business problems into technical designs.
• Understanding of the whole context, looking beyond immediate technical problems to identify wider implications.
• Capable of producing strategy for technology that meets business needs and creating, refining, and challenging patterns, standards, policies, roadmaps, and vision statements.
• Strong experience in cloud and application transformations, especially with Azure.

Qualifications

• Educated to degree level or equivalent experience in IT.
• TOGAF or BCS Certification (desirable).