Principal Digital Specialist - Digital Strategy & Architecture

At Scottish Water, we’re looking for a Principal Enterprise Architect to join our Digital Strategy & Architecture team — a pivotal role focused on developing and maintaining our Digital Strategy, steering digital investment, and guiding our ongoing digital transformation journey.

Our Digital Strategy is clear: Digitally Leading Scottish Water — through innovative solutions that add value, are secure, easy to use, and always on. As we look ahead to Strategic Review 2027, you'll play a key role in embedding this strategy across our organisation, enabling sustainable growth and operational excellence. This is your opportunity to shape a digital future where technology meets environmental responsibility, customer excellence, and value for money.

We are actively transforming how we operate, manage assets, and deliver capital investment. From implementing an industry-leading Enterprise model for capital delivery to enhancing our 24/7 operational performance through new technologies and smarter ways of working, this is transformation at scale.

Our investment in cloud-based IT services is helping us drive greater efficiency and security across our estate. Smart network technologies are enhancing our Wastewater Intelligent Network, making real-time data on combined sewer overflows publicly accessible. And with over £1BN per year invested in our assets, we continue to seek savings and elevate the customer experience through digital enablement, automation, and artificial intelligence.

As Principal Enterprise Architect, you will ensure delivery of the corporate digital strategy by building strong partnerships across Scottish Water and our supply chain. You will understand and champion business needs, ensuring they are supported by digital in a way that enables success.

In this role, you'll maintain and evolve the Scottish Water Digital Strategy and digital investment policy. You’ll develop trusted relationships between digital and functional teams across the organisation and beyond, translating emerging needs into actionable domain-level architecture views and plans. Your expertise will help inform future designs and prototypes of digital products and services, aligned to business outcomes.

You’ll collaborate with teams to define both current (AS-IS) and future (TO-BE) state capabilities, supporting the transition to a digitally enabled future. Working closely with our wider architecture community, you’ll ensure roadmap alignment, provide strategic advice, and bring digital innovation to life — through people, process and technology.

You’ll apply principles and policies that ensure alignment to our Digital Strategy while playing an active role in sharing knowledge and understanding best practice across the industry. You’ll also evaluate emerging technologies for their potential impact and usefulness to Scottish Water, mentoring others and supporting continuous improvement in architectural services.

We’re particularly excited about opportunities in automation and AI — and you’ll be helping us explore, prototype and scale these technologies to deliver meaningful outcomes.

To be successful in this role, you’ll bring:

• Proven leadership and decision-making skills, and the self-awareness to lead with impact
• Strong communication and influencing abilities at senior levels
• A good grasp of modern tech stacks and the implications for enterprise architecture
• Strategic understanding of cloud, IT solutions, quality standards, and regulatory frameworks
• The ability to de-mystify complex digital concepts for a wide audience
• Experience in enterprise and/or solution architecture (business, data, apps, infra)
• Solid analysis, critical thinking, and stakeholder engagement skills
• Knowledge of AI, automation, and data-driven transformation
• Familiarity with industry architecture frameworks and best practices
• Capability to model and present architectural views to support business clarity
• An understanding of our ambitions and challenges as a water utility
• Practical experience working with contractors and consultants on complex projects

Insight into change management, delivery practices, commercial risk, and project delivery

We’re looking for someone who is grounded in real-world architecture, who builds solutions that deliver measurable value. Someone who thrives in collaboration and is passionate about harnessing the power of AI to optimise, enhance and evolve how we work — in support of Scottish Water’s mission to lead digitally.

If you’re a forward-thinking architect or change professional with the technology insight and business acumen to drive real transformation — we want to hear from you.

Looking out for you 

While the work we do is important, we know it’s not the only thing that matters. That’s why we make sure you have everything you need to find a good work-life balance. 

You’ll get plenty of time to recharge with 38 days of holiday every year (including public holidays). And you can even buy five more if you need a little extra time. You can also take paid time off to volunteer in your community. 

When it comes to major life events we have family-friendly policies around adoption, maternity, and parental leave. And for the everyday? We embrace flexible working. 

For your future, there’s our defined benefits, contribution pension scheme (the ‘know-what-you’ll-get-when-you-retire’ kind), as well as life insurance. 

As for some nice extras? You can expect an annual company bonus. Not to mention access to SW Splash – handy rewards that can save you money on holidays, bills, and shopping.  

The not-so-small print  

This role will be a Grade 8. If you’re new to Scottish Water, you’ll join us on a salary between £48,900- £68,510, depending on your skills and experience. Performance-driven pay progression will then allow you to move through the range to the maximum salary. 

This role offers hybrid working – you can be based anywhere in the Central Belt, as long as you’re within commuting distance of our office hubs in Edinburgh, Dundee, Inverness, or Stepps (near Glasgow). 

If you’re interested in this role – or know someone else who might be – we’ll be accepting applications until midnight on the 28th July 2025.

Provisional Interview Dates:  5th and 6th August – Stepps office near Glasgow

Job offers at Scottish Water are conditional, and will be confirmed on completion of our pre-employment screening, e.g. referencing, criminal record checks, license checks, etc. These checks are conducted on our behalf by a third party. Don’t worry – we’ll ask your permission before starting these checks.   

Help us shape the future. Join Scottish Water.

A few final things worth knowing…

Research shows that some people avoid applying for jobs unless they can meet every single criteria. If you’re interested in this job, but don’t tick all the boxes, apply anyway! We hardly ever hire people who can do every part of a job from Day One. Everyone has a learning curve. So don’t rule yourself out!

Let us know if there are any changes we can make to our recruitment process to help you perform at your best. Lots of our people have disabilities or neurodiverse conditions (including some of our recruiters!). We're also aware that some people might be experiencing temporary challenges because of life events, like menopause. We’re very used to making adjustments, so please don’t be afraid to ask.

As part of our commitment to developing a flourishing Scotland, it’s important that all our employees are Scottish taxpayers. If you join us, your home address will need to be in Scotland. If you don’t already live here, you'll need to commit to moving here within your first three months.

Finally (finally!), candidates who haven’t submitted an application in the last 12 months will have their records removed from our recruitment database. You won’t need to do anything. Your data will be automatically deleted. 

We’re here to help.