Senior Architect in Coventry

Finance Technology - Senior Architect Job Specification

Why Join Us

Joining Sainsbury’s Tech means becoming part of a leading, multi-channel, multi-brand retailer where technology is at the heart of delivering value to customers and colleagues. As a Finance Senior Architect, you will play a pivotal role in shaping the future of Finance Technology, influencing both immediate delivery priorities and longer-term transformation initiatives. This is a unique opportunity to help define the architectural direction for one of the most critical domains in the business. You will work across Finance, Technology, Engineering and Architecture communities to shape end-to-end solutions, influence strategic decisions, and help drive future Finance transformation initiatives.

What You'll Do

As a Finance Senior Architect, you will be responsible for defining and evolving the architecture roadmap across the Finance domain. You will work closely with Product Managers, Engineering Managers, Domain Architects, Engineers and business stakeholders to design scalable, resilient and future-ready solutions. You will:

• Lead the architecture for Finance technology initiatives across areas such as General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Financial Reporting, Planning and associated Finance capabilities.
• Shape end-to-end solutions across business processes, applications, data and integrations rather than focusing solely on individual systems or technologies.
• Develop and communicate technical roadmaps that support both immediate business priorities and longer-term Finance transformation objectives.
• Provide architectural leadership for major change initiatives, including ERP modernisation, Finance transformation programmes, and platform evolution activities.
• Work collaboratively across multiple technology domains to ensure Finance solutions integrate effectively with upstream and downstream business processes.
• Create architecture artefacts including target state architectures, solution designs, integration patterns, decision records and roadmap plans.
• Ensure solutions are designed with scalability, security, maintainability, operability and resilience in mind.
• Influence stakeholders at all levels and provide clear guidance on architectural decisions, trade-offs and risks.
• Identify blockers, drive decisions and proactively escalate issues where business or technology decisions are required to maintain delivery momentum.
• Actively contribute to the wider Architecture Community of Practice, sharing knowledge, coaching others and helping shape architecture standards across Sainsbury’s Tech.

Who You Are

You are an experienced architect who combines strategic thinking with hands-on delivery experience. You understand how technology, business processes and organisational change come together to deliver successful transformation outcomes. You are naturally curious and demonstrate strong end-to-end thinking. Rather than focusing solely on a single application or technology stack, you seek to understand how business capabilities, systems, data and integrations work together to deliver value.

You are someone who:

• Has a proven track record of leading architecture on complex business transformation programmes.
• Can balance strategic architecture thinking with practical delivery outcomes.
• Demonstrates strong influencing, communication and stakeholder management skills.
• Is comfortable challenging assumptions and driving constructive discussions to achieve the right outcomes.
• Can identify when decisions are required and proactively engage stakeholders to unblock progress.
• Brings energy, passion and tenacity to solving complex business and technology problems.
• Uses real-world experience to guide decisions and can clearly articulate examples of previous transformation achievements.
• Builds trusted relationships across business and technology teams.
• Thrives in a collaborative environment and contributes positively to an inclusive culture.

Essential Skills & Experience

• Experience working as a Senior Architect, Solution Architect or Enterprise Architect within large-scale organisations.
• Experience designing and delivering end-to-end architecture across multiple business and technology domains.
• Proven experience supporting transformation programmes or ERP-related initiatives.
• Strong understanding of architecture disciplines including Business Architecture, Application Architecture, Data Architecture, Integration Architecture, Cloud-native Architecture.
• Experience defining architecture roadmaps and target-state architectures.
• Strong knowledge of integration patterns, APIs, event-driven architectures and modern engineering practices.
• Experience working in Agile product delivery environments.
• Ability to communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Demonstrable examples of driving architectural decisions through complex organisational environments.

Desirable Skills & Experience

• Experience of SAP architecture especially around SAP integrations with applications and other ERPs.
• Experience of Oracle Finance platforms and modernisation initiatives.
• Experience working with Finance business capabilities including General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Financial Reporting, Planning and Forecasting, Treasury.
• Retail industry experience.
• Experience supporting large-scale ERP migration or transformation programmes.
• Knowledge of Finance operating models and Finance process design.

Responsibilities

We’d all like amazing work to do, and real work-life balance. That’s waiting for you at Sainsbury’s. Think about the scale it takes to feed the nation. The level of data, transactions and variety involved. Then you’ll realise this is a modern software engineering environment, because it has to be. We’ve made significant investment in the standards and principles that shape how we work. We iterate, learn, experiment and champion ways of working such as Agile, Scrum and XP. So you can look forward to exciting opportunities across everything from AI to reusable tech.

Qualifications

We are committed to being a truly inclusive retailer, so you’ll be welcomed whoever you are and wherever you work. Around here, there’s always the chance to try something new - whether that’s as part of an evolving team or somewhere else across the business - and we take development seriously and promise to support you. We also recognise and celebrate colleagues when they go the extra mile and, where possible, offer flexible working. When you join our team, we’ll also offer you an amazing range of benefits. Here are some of them:

• Starting off with colleague discount, you'll be able to get 10% off at Sainsbury's, Argos, TU and Habitat after 4 weeks. This increases to 15% off at Sainsbury’s every Friday and Saturday and 15% off at Argos every pay day.
• We've also got you covered for your future with our pensions scheme and life cover.
• You'll also be able to share in our success as you may be eligible for a performance-related bonus of up to 20% of salary, depending on how we perform.
• Your wellbeing is important to us too. You'll receive an annual holiday allowance, and you can buy additional holiday.
• We also offer other benefits that will help your money go further such as season ticket loans, interest free car loan of up to £10k, cycle to work scheme, health cash plans, pay advance (where you can access some of your pay before pay day) as well access to a great range of discounts from hundreds of other retailers.
• And if you ever need it there is also an Employee Assistance Programme, you will also be eligible for private healthcare too.
• Moments that matter are as important to us as they are to you which is why we give up to 26 weeks’ pay for maternity or adoption leave and up to 4 weeks’ pay for paternity leave.

Please see www.sainsburys.jobs for a range of our benefits (note, length of service and eligibility criteria may apply).