Enterprise Architect in Leeds

Job Title- Enterprise Architect – Insurance, Pensions & Investments (IP&I)

About the Role

Experienced Enterprise Architect to join the Chief Technology Office (CTO) within the Insurance, Pensions & Investments (IP&I) division.

This is a strategic architecture role responsible for shaping and assuring enterprise-wide technology solutions across a complex and highly regulated business landscape.

The successful candidate will provide architectural leadership and technical direction, ensuring that solutions align with target-state strategies, enterprise standards, engineering best practices, and regulatory obligations while enabling business agility and delivery excellence.

Working closely with business, technology, engineering, platform, security, and delivery teams, the Enterprise Architect will develop and govern end-to-end architectures spanning applications, data, integration, infrastructure, cloud platforms, and security domains.

The role will play a critical part in defining future-state technology capabilities, supporting major transformation initiatives, and driving consistency across the IP&I technology estate.

This position requires a hands‑on architectural practitioner who can engage deeply with engineering teams, make informed technical decisions, evaluate trade‑offs, and balance strategic objectives with pragmatic delivery outcomes.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain enterprise architecture roadmaps aligned to the strategic objectives of the Insurance, Pensions & Investments business.
• Define target‑state architecture models that support business growth, modernization, efficiency, resilience, and regulatory compliance.
• Ensure alignment between business capabilities, technology investments, and enterprise technology strategies.
• Support the evolution of architectural standards, principles, governance frameworks, and reference architectures.
• Review, challenge, and assure solution designs across multiple programmes and portfolios.
• Provide architectural guidance during discovery, feasibility, design, and delivery phases.

• Produce and review architecture artefacts including

• Solution Designs
• Conceptual, Logical, and Physical Architecture Models
• Capability Maps
• Roadmaps
• Target‑State Blueprints
• Define hybrid cloud and hosting architectures supporting scalable and resilient solutions.
• Guide cloud adoption and modernization initiatives across public, private, and hybrid environments.
• Support infrastructure transformation programmes across compute, networking, storage, and platform services.
• Ensure alignment with enterprise cloud standards and security controls.
• Define architecture patterns supporting modern digital platforms and enterprise applications.
• Lead the adoption of API‑first, microservices, and event‑driven architectures.
• Identify opportunities to simplify and rationalize legacy technology estates.
• Drive reuse of enterprise integration services and common technology platforms.
• Support architecture decisions involving data platforms, governance, analytics, and information management.
• Ensure appropriate consideration of data models, lineage, governance, privacy, and regulatory controls.
• Collaborate with Data Architecture teams to promote consistency and strategic alignment.
• Non‑Functional Architecture
• Security
• Availability
• Resilience
• Performance
• Scalability
• Observability
• Maintainability
• Ensure solutions meet regulatory, operational, and cyber‑security requirements.
• Proven experience operating as an Enterprise Architect, Lead Architect, Principal Architect, or Senior Solution Architect within a large‑scale enterprise environment.
• Strong understanding of enterprise architecture frameworks and practices.
• Experience creating architecture roadmaps, transformation strategies, and target‑state architectures.
• Technical Architecture
• Security Architecture
• Experience designing and governing cloud‑native and hybrid‑cloud architectures.

Strong architecture expertise across

• Security Architecture
• Experience designing and governing cloud‑native and hybrid‑cloud architectures.
• Integration & APIs
• API‑led architectures
• Event‑driven architectures
• Service‑oriented architectures
• Microservices
• Messaging technologies
• Strong understanding of modern software engineering practices.
• Experience working within Agile, Dev Ops, Platform Engineering, and Product‑centric delivery models.
• Ability to engage directly with engineering teams to guide architecture implementation.
• Security & Resilience

• Knowledge of

• Identity and Access Management
• Operational resilience
• Disaster Recovery
• Business Continuity
• Regulatory and risk controls

• Experience producing and reviewing

• HLDs and LLDs
• Technical Standards
• Experience participating in governance and architecture review boards.
• Financial Services, Insurance, Pensions, Wealth Management or Investment industry experience.
• Knowledge of UK financial regulatory environments.
• Familiarity with emerging technologies including AI, automation, platform engineering and cloud modernization.

• Experience with architecture modelling tools such as

• Lean IX
• Sparx EA
• Archi Mate
• Visio
• Personal Attributes
• Strong analytical and problem‑solving skills.
• Strategic thinker with the ability to balance long‑term vision and short‑term delivery priorities.
• Excellent stakeholder management and influencing skills.
• Ability to navigate ambiguity and complexity.
• Strong communication and presentation capabilities.
• Pragmatic decision‑maker with sound engineering judgement.
• Collaborative and relationship‑driven approach.
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