Sadler Recruitment
Head of Enterprise Architecture
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Role: Head of Enterprise Architecture
Location: UK wide
Salary: Circa £120,000 per annum + discretionary bonus
About the Role
Our client are the digital architects of enterprise software and applications. Their engineering teams build and scale high-throughput IoT data platforms, intelligent orchestration software, and advanced management systems.
The Head of Enterprise Architecture owns every architecture decision across the group and holds that authority permanently within IT, meaning direction is never set by a supplier or a business unit. The role reports to the CIO and sits at the top of the architecture function, with accountability for capability roadmap, technical risk, and the reference architecture that underpins the organisation's strategy through to 2030.
Key Responsibilities
Design Authority & Governance
- Act as the single design authority for all architecture decisions
- Own and maintain the enterprise architecture framework, principles, standards, and governance model.
- Chair the Enterprise Architecture Board, running design reviews with documented go/no-go decisions and ensuring every technology is EAB-approved before implementation.
- Assign a single named IT owner to every system, platform, and integration.
Architecture Strategy & Capability Roadmap
- Define the target architecture and capability roadmap
- Ensure new verticals and products can be added without structural rework.
Platform Over Project
- Champion investment in reusable capability, including the integration layer, F&O, over one-off solutions.
- Apply a platform-versus-technical-debt test to every delivery decision.
- Drive decommissioning and consolidation of legacy architecture.
Systems and Software Development/Design
- Senior-level oversight of the full software/systems development lifecycle - from planning through to delivery and evolution.
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Deep Technical Ownership & Supplier Governance
- Hold secondary technical ownership of key platforms including D365/F&O.
- Govern supplier output against a defined brief, with suppliers delivering to that brief rather than authoring it.
- Preserve architecture and design authority internally while execution is outsourced.
Leadership & Team Development
- Lead and develop the Enterprise Architecture team, moving to a one-person-one-area model across capability and application-domain architects.
- Maintain spans of 5–8, a maximum of five layers, and consistent titles and career paths.
- Manage resourcing, performance, and succession, with structured knowledge transfer to reduce key-person risk.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Partner with Change, Data & Analytics, Information Security, IT Operations, and Business Partnering to turn strategy into deliverable roadmaps.
- Ensure clean, documented handovers between Think, Change, and Do.
Security, Quality & Standards
- Embed security-by-design into every architecture decision.
- Set reference architectures, engineering standards, and quality gates for internal and outsourced delivery.
Continuous Improvement
- Scan the technology landscape and advise on emerging solutions and best practice.
- Manage the function against clear IT service and delivery KPIs.
Experience Required
- Extensive experience operating at Head of Architecture or equivalent senior level, with accountability for enterprise architecture strategy and direction across multiple business domains, not just a single platform or programme.
- Proven experience leading and developing a team of architects, including hiring, coaching, and succession planning within the function.
- Experience translating business strategy into enterprise architecture strategy, and communicating that vision credibly to senior stakeholders including CTO, CFO, and programme boards.
- Experience establishing architecture governance frameworks from scratch or significantly maturing an existing one, with demonstrable adoption across the organisation.
- Experience governing outsourced or supplier delivery at portfolio level, holding multiple suppliers to defined briefs and architectural standards.
- Experience leading large-scale platform or legacy transformation, including measurable technical-debt reduction, delivered through others rather than as an individual contributor.
- Experience with modern, cloud-native and platform/integration architecture, including APIs and event-driven services, at a level sufficient to set standards and review the work of domain architects.
- Experience with enterprise applications and ERP, specifically D365/Dynamics F&O, and core data platforms.
- Demonstrable application of TOGAF or an equivalent recognised architecture framework, ideally having led its adoption or maturity within an organisation.
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Skills & Attributes
- Comfortable holding design authority and challenging suppliers and senior stakeholders when direction conflicts with architecture standards.
- Strong written and verbal communication, able to translate complex technical detail for both technical and non-technical audiences.
- Strong problem-solving and root-cause analysis skills.
- Resilient and able to operate effectively in ambiguous situations.
Desirable
- Working knowledge of a regulated and/or energy-sector environment.
- DevSecOps and secure-by-design engineering practice.
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