Business Architect

Marks and Spencer; City Of London; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

A prominent UK retailer is seeking a Business Architect to connect strategic goals to practical delivery. The role involves defining business impacts, optimizing processes, and maintaining architectural integrity. Candidates should have over 5 years of experience in business architecture and a proven record in digital transformation. The company offers a hybrid work model with a range of employee benefits, including discounts and wellness support.

Benefits

20% colleague discount

Competitive holiday allowance

Discretionary bonus schemes

Strong pension and life assurance

Tailored induction and training

Market-leading family policies

24/7 wellbeing support

Paid volunteer day once a year

Qualifications

• 5-10+ years of experience in business architecture.
• Proven track record of large-scale digital transformation.
• Strong knowledge of aligning technology with strategic goals.

Responsibilities

• Define business impacts of strategic objectives.
• Lead value stream and business process design.
• Maintain architectural integrity while balancing business needs.

Skills

Business architecture

Process modelling (BPMN, APQC)

Digital transformation

Collaboration and stakeholder engagement

Strategic thinking

Tools

Emerging platforms/technologies

Job description

Overview

At M&S, we're on an exciting journey to modernise one of the UK's most iconic brands. Our Architecture team plays a key role in shaping the technology, processes and ways of working that support millions of customers and thousands of colleagues every year. We're making bold investments in innovation to ensure M&S continues to lead in retail.

As a Business Architect, you'll bring your business and process expertise into a dynamic, customer-focused environment. Your role will be about connecting strategic goals to practical delivery—helping us translate vision into clear, measurable outcomes. You'll shape priorities that balance ambition with financial impact, ensuring the big picture and day-to-day execution stay aligned.

What you’ll do

• Define the business impacts of strategic objectives—capturing targets, roadmaps, and transition states, and identifying guardrails, risks, issues and dependencies.
• Lead value stream and business process design, optimising processes to make sure they align with strategic goals.
• Support prioritisation by ensuring investment and operating costs are factored into decision-making.
• Work across squads and tribes to keep end-to-end architecture and roadmaps aligned.
• Maintain architectural integrity while balancing business needs and cost-effectiveness, gaining approvals through design authority/architecture boards where appropriate.

Who you are

• 5-10+ years of experience in business architecture, ideally with modelling skills (e.g. BPMN, APQC).
• A proven track record of delivering business architectures for large-scale digital transformation, with experience of emerging technologies within the last 3 years.
• Strong knowledge of current and emerging platforms/technologies, and the ability to align them with strategic goals.
• A strategic thinker with excellent communication skills—able to turn complex ideas into clear, customer-focused outcomes.
• Naturally collaborative, engaging the right stakeholders at the right time and keeping them bought in through to delivery.

What’s in it for you?

Working at M&S means being part of something bigger—helping to deliver quality, value and service to millions of customers every day. We\'re inclusive, fast-moving and always evolving, with a strong sense of purpose and a focus on doing the right thing.

Here are just a few of the benefits that make working here even more rewarding:

• 20% colleague discount on all M&S products and many third-party brands for you and someone in your household, available once you\'ve completed your probation
• Competitive holiday allowance with the option to buy more
• Discretionary bonus schemes linked to your performance and ours
• Strong pension and life assurance to help plan for the future
• Tailored induction and training to support your development from day one
• Exclusive perks and savings through our M&S Choices portal
• Market-leading family policies, including parental, adoption and neonatal leave
• 24/7 wellbeing support, including virtual GP access and mental health services
• One paid volunteer day a year to support a cause that matters to you

Everyone's welcome

We are ambitious about the future of retail. We're disrupting, innovating and leading the industry into a more conscientious, inspiring digital era. Marks & Spencer strives to be an inclusive organisation, trusted and admired by our colleagues, customers and suppliers. Join us and make change happen.

We are committed to building diverse and representative teams, where everyone can bring their whole selves to work and be at their best. We support each other and work together to win together.

If you feel you\'d benefit from any support or reasonable adjustments during any stage of the recruitment process, please don\'t hesitate to let us know when completing your application. This information will be picked up by our team, so we can try and put steps in place to help you be at your best through this process.

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