Principal Enterprise Architect

NatWest Group; City Of London; On-site; GBP 80,000 - 110,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading financial services firm in London is seeking a Principal Enterprise Architect to lead the architecture of customer-centric digital products. You will guide teams to deliver robust solutions while fostering a culture of collaboration and innovation. The ideal candidate will possess deep expertise in enterprise architecture, cloud, and agile methodologies, with a track record of influencing senior stakeholders. This position offers competitive compensation and professional development opportunities.

Qualifications

• Deep expertise in enterprise architecture frameworks and cloud technologies.
• Proven ability to design and operationalise target operating models.
• Excellent communication skills to convey technical concepts to leadership.

Responsibilities

• Lead teams of architects and engineers to build high performance, secure digital products.
• Conduct architecture and design reviews of high architectural significance.
• Recruit, mentor, and develop teams of skilled architects.

Skills

Enterprise architecture frameworks

Cloud technologies

Microservices

AI

DevOps

Agile methodologies

Composable architecture principles

Job description

Join us as a Principal Enterprise Architect

Overview

• We’ll look to you to lead the definition and implementation of an enterprise-wide target operating model that enables agile delivery, composable architecture, and iterative development across business and technology domains.
• You'll lead the creation and evolution of a strategic enterprise architecture roadmap, ensuring investment decisions are guided by architectural priorities and deliver measurable business value.
• With valuable exposure, you’ll cultivate strong relationships and proactively engage with key stakeholders, including C-level business and technology executives, vendors and partners, and industry thought leaders

What you'll do

As a Principal Enterprise Architect, you’ll be leading teams of architects and engineers to architect customer centric, high performance, secure, robust and sustainable end to end digital products, solutions, and services that deliver business value while aligning to the bank’s strategic target architecture.

You’ll be actively contributing to the growth of architecting capability and the community across the bank through thought leadership, knowledge sharing, contributing to the community of practice, and building capability in others through coaching, mentoring and teaching.

As well as this, you’ll be:

• Leading architecture and design reviews of solution architectures within delivery programmes of high architectural significance or risk
• Inspecting and verifying that proposed designs meet business needs, and are compliant with Architecture Council approved architecture principles, standards, and patterns
• Assuring investment alignment with business and digital strategies through making explicit recommendations and influencing investment decisions
• Chairing architectural design authorities and review boards to evaluate proposed solutions and help ensure alignment with strategy, architecture principles, and standards
• Recruiting, mentoring, and developing teams of highly skilled architects, fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation, and technical excellence
• Continuously researching and evaluating emerging technologies, architecture patterns, and industry best practices to identify threats to current architecture and opportunities for innovation and competitive advantage

The skills you\'ll need

To succeed in this role, you’ll need deep expertise in enterprise architecture frameworks, Cloud, microservices, platform architecture, AI, DevOps, agile methodologies and composable architecture principles, with a strong understanding of iterative and incremental delivery models.

You’ll have a proven ability to design and operationalise target operating models that foster cross-functional collaboration, rapid innovation, and scalable, modular technology solutions.

You’ll bring proven experience of leading the definition and development of strategic target architectures that align with organisational objectives. This will include extensive experience of engaging with partners across the organisation and wider technology industry to define architectures that deliver tangible business outcomes.

You’ll have excellent communication skills with the ability to clearly communicate complex technical concepts to colleagues up to senior leadership level

You’ll also demonstrate

• The ability to drive architecture-led investment decisions, influencing senior stakeholders to prioritise initiatives that align with the strategic roadmap and enterprise architecture vision.
• A track record of leading architecture governance, facilitating agile decision-making, and mentoring teams to adopt best practices in composable and iterative solution delivery.
• Extensive experience of leading the oversight and assurance of architecture designs, with a focus on risk management and governance
• Experience of leading initiatives that promote best practices, support professional development, and encourage collaboration across architecture teams