Enterprise Solutions Architect in Wilmslow

Citation is a £280M+ PE-backed provider of compliance, verification, and certification services to 120,000+ global clients. Our growth combines organic development with 2-3 strategic acquisitions per year, requiring rapid integration of new capabilities while maintaining exceptional client outcomes. We operate as an AI-first business, continuously exploring how emerging technologies can transform operations and services.

We are looking for an Enterprise Architect focused on the early-stage work that shapes strategic initiatives and M&A integrations. You will be embedded in high-impact initiatives from inception, working with senior stakeholders to translate business ambiguity into architectural clarity. You will facilitate workshops, navigate uncertainty, help stakeholders understand decisions they need to make, and stay connected through delivery—because we know embedded architects give us the best chance of success.

• Strategic Initiative Shaping: Partner with senior stakeholders to translate business ambitions into clear, actionable initiatives with well-defined outcomes and scope. Surface the questions stakeholders haven’t thought to ask and manage progressive design elaboration: being clear about what’s locked, what’s open, and what we’ll discover during build. Develop multiple technical options with clear trade-offs around cost, risk, timelines, and strategic alignment, and create business cases that enable informed decision-making.
• M&A Technical Due Diligence & Integration: Run cross-functional architecture workshops bringing together product leads, platform teams, and business stakeholders. Assess target businesses’ technical capabilities and architecture during pre-acquisition due diligence, translating findings into integration strategies (lift-and-shift, re-platform, retire). Define integration approaches and capability mapping, develop high-level roadmaps with costs, timelines, and resource requirements to inform acquisition decisions. Identify technical risks, dependencies, and opportunities within acquisition targets, and stay embedded through post-acquisition integration, navigating complexity and unblocking teams.
• AI-First Thinking & Stakeholder Navigation: Champion AI-first approaches across initiatives, evaluating emerging tools and working with stakeholders to reimagine core business processes through an AI lens. Partner with business leaders who don’t know what they don’t know, framing technical constraints as business trade-offs rather than saying “that’s out of scope.” Build trust with both technical teams and commercial stakeholders, translating between business intent and technical reality.
• Delivery Connection: Stay connected through delivery, adjusting designs based on implementation learnings and bringing together technical teams to ensure end-to-end solutions remain coherent. Identify integration points and data flows that nobody’s thought about, support critical course corrections, and maintain a record of what’s been decided, when, and why.

• Strategic architecture capability: Proven ability to work with senior stakeholders to shape initiatives, own end-to-end architecture across multiple products, and deliver outcomes not just designs.
• Business architecture skills: Capability mapping, target operating model design, and business process analysis.
• M&A experience: Technical due diligence, post-acquisition integration, or rapid assessment of unfamiliar technology estates—you know the patterns and anti-patterns.
• Facilitation & stakeholder management: Consulting-grade skills to run workshops with diverse stakeholders, elicit requirements from people who don’t know what questions to ask, and build consensus while challenging assumptions.
• Technical breadth: Generalist background across modern enterprise architecture patterns, cloud platforms, integration approaches, and data architectures.

• AI expertise: Deep understanding of AI capabilities with practical implementation experience.
• Data migration: Complex migrations in M&A or platform consolidation contexts.
• Domain experience: Professional services, B2B SaaS, or PE-backed high-growth environments.
• Coaching: Experience developing other architects.

You will work across a diverse technology estate. We don’t expect deep expertise in every platform, but familiarity with modern enterprise technologies is essential:

• Enterprise SaaS: Salesforce, Certinia, HubSpot, Planhat, Sage.
• Data & analytics: Snowflake, Databricks, Tableau.

In your first 6 months, you will have:

• Led the architectural shaping of 2-3 strategic initiatives from initial stakeholder engagement through to delivery handover.
• Contributed to technical due diligence for at least 1 acquisition, providing clear integration assessments.
• Built strong relationships across the business, establishing yourself as a trusted advisor on technical strategy.
• Developed deep understanding of Citation’s business model and technology estate, collaborating effectively with the existing architecture team.

Over time, success means you’re the first person stakeholders think of when they need to shape a strategic initiative, assess an acquisition target, or navigate complex architectural decisions. Your work directly influences investment decisions, shapes our technology direction, and ensures initiatives are set up for delivery success.