Application Architect Lead in Manchester

Tasks

• Maintain a complete and up-to-date inventory of all applications in use across the business (SaaS, hosted, and internally delivered).
• Develop and maintain an application architecture principles and roadmap, covering lifecycle stages (introduce, optimise, retire).
• Map applications to business capabilities, ensuring clarity of purpose and ownership.
• Identify where multiple applications support the same capability and provide clear recommendations for consolidation or rationalisation.

Application Landscape Management

• Maintain a complete and up-to-date inventory of all applications in use across the business (SaaS, hosted, and internally delivered).
• Develop and maintain an application architecture principles and roadmap, covering lifecycle stages (introduce, optimise, retire).
• Map applications to business capabilities, ensuring clarity of purpose and ownership.
• Identify where multiple applications support the same capability and provide clear recommendations for consolidation or rationalisation.

Application Strategy & Capability Planning

• Work with business stakeholders and application owners to understand current and future capability requirements.
• Analysis of gaps in capability, duplication, and opportunities for optimisation and collaborate with Group IT to:
• Assess existing enterprise capabilities
• Leverage group solutions where appropriate
• Avoid unnecessary duplication of systems
• Ensure alignment between application strategy and wider organisational objectives and architecture principles.

Governance & Procurement Advisory

• Act as a member of the software procurement board.
• Assess and provide recommendations on proposed applications and investments, considering:
• Strategic fit and business value
• Overlap with existing systems

Integration complexity

Cost, risk, and lifecycle implications

• Establish and maintain standards for software selection and architecture compliance.
• Ensure all application decisions are supported by clear, evidence-based analysis.

Integration & Data Architecture Advisory

• Provide guidance on the integration of SaaS and enterprise applications, including:
• System-to-system integration patterns (APIs, middleware, event-driven architectures)
• Cloud-to-cloud and hybrid integration scenarios
• Ensure applications are designed to integrate with: Data warehouse / data lake platforms & Reporting and analytics environments
• Promote best practices in:
• Data consistency and interoperability
• API-led integration
• Reusable integration patterns

SharePoint Online

• Solutions Architecture - Lead the architectural design of applications that leverage SharePoint.
• Governance – Ensure SharePoint solutions align with organisational information governance, retention and security policies.

Stakeholder Engagement & Coordination

Work Closely With

• IT Director (co-ordination of sub-division strategies and capability needs)
• Senior IT Manager (service ownership, performance, lifecycle)
• Application Owners (functional ownership and requirements)
• Data & Analytics teams (reporting and insight requirements)
• Group IT / Enterprise Architecture teams
• Facilitate discussions to align business needs, technical solutions, and strategic direction.
• Act as a bridge between strategic architecture and delivery-focused solution design.

Architecture Standards & Assurance

• Define and maintain application and integration architecture standards.
• Review proposed solutions to ensure:
• Alignment with agreed principles and standards
• Scalability, maintainability, and security
• Provide input into solution design where cross-system considerations are required.

Key Deliverables

• Application inventory and classification (by capability, lifecycle, owner).
• Application roadmap and forward strategy.
• Capability-to-application mapping models.
• Application rationalisation recommendations.
• Procurement board assessments and recommendations.
• Integration architecture guidance and patterns.
• Architecture compliance reviews.

Qualifications

• Ability to design scalable, secure and maintainable application solutions aligned with enterprise standards.
• Expertise in APIs and connecting systems across the organisation.
• Experience with Power Automate, Power Apps, and their integration with SharePoint.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills.
• Self-Starter, goal oriented able to plan and prioritise workloads and hit the ground running.
• Experience of working with BAs and procurement teams, requirements analysis and process improvement.
• Proficient in Project Management, Agile, Risk management.
• Awareness of ISO27001 and Data Protection Act.

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