Enterprise Architect - Waste

Southern Water; Worthing; Hybrid; GBP 80,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

Southern Water is seeking an Enterprise Architect - Waste to guide business and technology leaders through digital and business strategy, ensuring architecture across business, information, applications, technology and operating models.

You will build future-state models, governance and cross-functional roadmaps, enabling delivery teams to maximise value from current investments while planning for future capabilities in a regulated utility environment.

Qualifications

• Proven experience leading enterprise architecture programs.
• Strong stakeholder engagement with senior leaders.
• Experience across multiple industries and technology domains.
• Knowledge of cloud, SaaS, APIs, microservices and event-driven architectures.

Responsibilities

• Translate business strategy into actionable architectural roadmaps.
• Provide governance, standards and guardrails to enable delivery teams.
• Lead cross-functional discussions on risk, investment and enterprise-wide impacts.
• Mentor architects and contribute to a coherent architecture practice.

Skills

Enterprise architecture

Storytelling

Data-driven

Stakeholder management

Cloud architecture

Innovation practices

EA tooling

Education

TOGAF certification

Azure cloud certifications

Tools

Application catalogues

EA tooling

Job description

Contract Type: Permanent

Salary: Competitive depending on skills and experience

Closing Date 2026-08-17

Job Title: Enterprise Architect - Waste

Location: Durrington (Hybrid)

Contract Type: Permanent

Salary: Competitive depending on skills and experience

The Enterprise Architect-Waste proactively and holistically guides business and technology leaders through the formulation and execution of Digital and business strategy. The role ensures business outcomes are supported through coherent, future‑focused enterprise architecture across business, information, applications, technology, and operating models.

The Enterprise Architect builds strong relationships across Product, Platform, Digital, Data, Security, Delivery and Infrastructure, ensuring alignment between strategy and execution. The role identifies and assesses disruptive forces, shapes strategic options, develops future‑state models, guides innovation, and provides governance and architectural direction to support sustainable digital transformation.

A key responsibility is to articulate clear architectural direction and enable cross‑functional teams through roadmaps, standards, guardrails, and coaching. The role acts as a senior advisor, connecting strategy to execution and ensuring architectural integrity, investment clarity, and measurable business value.

Overall, the role focuses on maximising the value from our existing investments in technology, in addition to ensuring we invest in the right technology to meet future business needs.

Accountabilities

The role is accountable for leading enterprise architecture development, ensuring alignment between business strategy and technology execution across the following key areas:

Strategic Insight & Future‑State Planning

• Identify and assess disruptive forces, trends and market changes that impact enterprise strategy.


• Analyse business models, operating models, technology ecosystems and industry shifts to inform strategic direction.


• Develop future‑state and current‑state enterprise models using structured, design‑driven approaches.

Strategy to Execution Alignment

• Translate business strategy into actionable architectural roadmaps.


• Construct technology‑enabled business and operating models that provide viable strategic options.


• Provide clear visibility into execution risks, architectural dependencies and transformation implications.

Enterprise Engagement & Advisory

• Build and communicate the EA value proposition, positioning the EA function as an internal strategic consultancy.


• Engage senior business leaders, product owners and IT leaders to provide context‑specific architectural advice.


• Lead cross‑functional discussions on risk, strategy, investment decisions and enterprise‑wide impacts.

Leadership of the Architecture Community

• Lead and mentor architects across domains to ensure alignment, coherence and shared architectural principles.


• Work with governance bodies to guide transformation and resolve cross‑team conflicts.

Business Architecture & Decision Support

• Develop business‑architecture artefacts that support strategy-to-execution alignment.


• Identify business drivers and targeted outcomes, producing diagnostic deliverables for investment decisions.

Enabling Cross‑Enterprise Coherence

• Analyse future‑state and current‑state capabilities to identify gaps and improvement opportunities.


• Define organisational structures, roles and cultural changes needed for effective digital transformation.


• Collaborate with CIO and IT leadership to shape EA operating models and governance mechanisms.

External and Industry insight

• Assess technological, economic, political, and regulatory trends for strategic relevance.


• Identify innovation opportunities and competitive threats driven by emerging technologies.

Roadmapping

• Develop enterprise architecture roadmaps reflecting current‑state maturity and future‑state needs.


• Lead analysis of the IT landscape to identify deficiencies, optimisation opportunities and modernisation paths.

Architecture Governance & Delivery Enablement

• Define and apply minimal viable architectures, standards, patterns and guardrails.


• Provide “freedom-in-a-box” to product and delivery teams through clear architectural boundaries.


• Collaborate with delivery and infrastructure teams to ensure consistency and iterative architecture evolution.

Knowledge

• Architecture Scale - Extensive experience in enterprise architecture in a mature architecture practise.


• Wider Industry - Experience in working across multiple industries in an architecture role.


• Data Driven – Experience in using IT data and external insight to drive decision making and communicate direction


• Story telling – Ability to simplify complex problems and scenarios through story telling and slidewear.


• Strong knowledge of business models, operating models and technology ecosystems.


• Technology - Deep understanding of cloud, SaaS, APIs, microservices, event‑driven architectures and integration patterns.


• Innovation - Strong awareness of emerging technologies, innovation practices and digital transformation trends.


• Tools - Experience implementing and driving value from Application catalogues and EA tooling.


• Stakeholders - Experience working within complex stakeholder landscapes across business and technology.

Qualifications - Desirable

• TOGAF, BCS or equivalent architecture qualifications.


• Cloud architecture certifications (Azure).