Chief Architect - AI-Driven Payments Platform

Referment; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Referment is partnering with a regulated UK bank to appoint a Head of Architecture in London. You will own the end-to-end enterprise architecture and lead a small team of enterprise and domain architects through a multi-year transformation toward an agentic, AI-enabled operating model.

You will define current-state, transitional and target-state architectures across business, data, application and technology domains, shaping roadmaps and governance to enable rapid, value-driven change while

Qualifications

• Proven leadership of an architecture function in a transformation-heavy setting.
• Deep experience in payments or FX platforms with scale.
• Hands-on architecture of distributed, event-driven microservices.
• Strong communication and senior stakeholder influence.
• Familiarity with modernisation in regulated environments using TOGAF/ArchiMate.

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor and develop a team of enterprise and domain architects.
• Shape strategic technology roadmaps across payments, data, AI and platform domains.
• Drive architectural simplification and scalable patterns across legacy and new systems.
• Champion event-driven, cloud-native architectures with pragmatic governance.
• Translate architectural intent into practical execution frameworks delivering measurable value.
• Advise senior executives on strategic technology decisions and business-architecture alignment.

Skills

Architecture leadership

Payments/FX domains

Event-driven microservices

Distributed systems

Cloud-native

TOGAF/ArchiMate

Stakeholder management

Regulated environment

Education

Technical degree

Tools

TOGAF

ArchiMate

Job description

Referment is partnering with a regulated UK bank to appoint a Head of Architecture in London. You will own the end-to-end enterprise architecture and lead a small team of enterprise and domain architects through a multi-year transformation toward an agentic, AI-enabled operating model.

You will define current-state, transitional and target-state architectures across business, data, application and technology domains, shaping roadmaps and governance to enable rapid, value-driven change while