Nationwide
Senior Technology Architect
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Senior Architect - Payments Portfolio
We are looking for a Senior Architect to join our multi-disciplinary architecture team in the Payments portfolio, supporting Payments CIO strategic programmes and value stream initiatives to shape and assure the technical direction for Nationwide’s Payments systems. We’re looking for someone who brings thought leadership, strategic vision combined with practical delivery judgement and the confidence to influence senior business and technology stakeholders through clear architecture narratives, data-led insights and well-structured recommendations. The successful candidate will balance innovation and fast-paced delivery with strong governance, helping us exploit emerging technology safely and pragmatically.
This role is part of the leadership team within the Payments Architecture team in Customer Technology Delivery (COO), aligned to the Payments CIO. The team is responsible for defining the Payments technical roadmap based on business strategy, shaping solution options and design, and ensuring CIO deliveries align to the agreed strategies, roadmaps, enterprise guardrails and relevant industry standards.
Payments within Nationwide is entering a period of significant change as we complete our simplification and modernisation roadmap within the existing estate to drive resilience and security, exploit new technology like artificial intelligence to improve customer experience and efficiency, prepare for further change including the technical integration between Nationwide and Virgin Money, while responding to industry and regulatory demands as they emerge. This creates a strong pipeline of meaningful work, with opportunities to transform how Nationwide serves its 24 million customers.
We have an ambitious strategy to transform and simplify our Payments estate to support our members for the future, with our core focus being:
- Electronic Payments: completing our Faster Payments and BACS modernisation journeys; commencing High Value and International Payments Modernisation; and supporting Business customers through the introduction of Direct Debit collections.
- Cards: upgrading infrastructure and legacy applications to deliver enhanced resilience, capacity and capability across card payments.
- Integration: designing solutions that ensure continuity of payments as we are integrating the Virgin Money and Nationwide estates.
This is an excellent opportunity to join the Payments Architecture team at a time of meaningful change, helping to shape practical, resilient and future-ready solutions. The successful candidate will bring a broad base of senior architecture experience, together with hands-on understanding of payment schemes, standards, processes and technologies.
At Nationwide we offer hybrid working wherever possible. More rewarding relationships are supported through our hybrid approach, bringing colleagues together across our UK wide estate, whilst also supporting generous access to home working. We value our time in the office to solve problems, to learn, and to feel connected.
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For this job you'll spend at least two days per week, or if part time you'll spend 40% of your working time, based at either our Swindon Or London office. If your application is successful, your hiring manager will provide further details on how this works. You can also find out more about our approach to hybrid working here [https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnationwide-jobs.co.uk%2Flife-at-nationwide%2Frewarding-you&data=05%7C02%7CSamantha.Graham%40nationwide-jobs.co.uk%7Cc3d3225d77e54ab5a92008dedc2cceff%7C18ed93f5e4704996b0ef9554af985d50%7C0%7C0%7C639190282163461695%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=PC5Y9xpYWimDrh3FYkvbMMF87I34nF17ytwWljcifjI%3D&reserved=0].
Whilst these locations are where we are primarily looking to fill the role, if you’re an internal applicant based in a different location we would welcome your application and if successful, your hiring manager will provide further details on how this could work for this specific role. You can also find out more about our approach to hybrid working here [https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnationwide-jobs.co.uk%2Flife-at-nationwide%2Frewarding-you&data=05%7C02%7CSamantha.Graham%40nationwide-jobs.co.uk%7Cc3d3225d77e54ab5a92008dedc2cceff%7C18ed93f5e4704996b0ef9554af985d50%7C0%7C0%7C639190282163491890%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=xcw6RJCrwBHPemN0twKbUAEgcj%2Fwbg6By56h6kGiEfw%3D&reserved=0].
Nationwide is committed to the redeployment of our employees impacted by change, as such applications for redeployment candidates will be prioritised in this recruitment process. If you’re a colleague on long-term absence (for example, on parental leave) or a temporary worker, please use your personal email address to submit an application.
RESPONSIBILITIES
What you’ll be doing
You’ll be a key part of the Payments Architecture team, supporting the Payments CIO’s change portfolio by working alongside Payments value streams, product and delivery colleagues, engineers, vendors, partners and architects from across Nationwide.
You’ll provide thought leadership for Payments, helping the portfolio make confident technology choices that balance innovation, member and colleague outcomes, resilience, cost, risk and governance. This means being curious about new technology, while being disciplined about where experimentation should become enterprise-grade delivery.
You’ll shape, lead and track the plan for architectural deliverables within the value streams, and where appropriate the wider team’s work, to define target states and transition states for applications across Payments. This includes agreeing the plan upfront, managing key milestones, raising and resolving architecturally significant questions, and proactively engaging senior stakeholders so progress is visible and expectations are managed effectively.
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You’ll create high-quality architecture artefacts and outputs that influence senior business and technology stakeholders to enable timely, well-informed decisions that lead to strategic and tangible technology outcomes.
The role is accountable for the end-to-end completeness and integrity of their owning solutions, making sure designs are secure, resilient, supportable and aligned to relevant governance, patterns, standards and guardrails. You’ll collaborate with Domain Architects and enterprise architecture teams to ensure solutions are aligned across portfolios, transition states are coherent, and the organisation can move safely towards agreed target states.
You’ll lead and coach Solution Architects and engineers across the portfolio to produce high-quality design artefacts and deliver within governance. You’ll provide clear direction, practical assurance and constructive coaching so quality improves, rework is minimised and escalations are managed effectively.
You’ll actively support architecture practice improvements, contributing tangible actions that improve productivity, consistency, communication and quality of output across the team.
About you
We’re looking for an established senior architect who can demonstrate applied experience in:
- Applying architecture thinking to real payments change, balancing strategy, delivery, innovation, resilience, regulation, governance, colleague and member outcomes.
- Providing thought leadership on complex architectural topics, creating clarity where there are competing priorities, incomplete information or differing stakeholder views.
- Defining target states, transition states and roadmaps for complex payments applications and value streams.
- Using data, insight and structured storytelling to influence senior stakeholders, secure buy-in and enable timely architecture and technology decisions.
- Designing and delivering payments solutions in a UK financial services organisation or similarly regulated environment.
- Producing high-quality architecture artefacts, including logical architecture, integration views, data flows, non-functional requirements, options analysis, decision papers, governance submissions and senior stakeholder papers.
- Providing insight on future technologies, including agentic AI, and how they could unlock business value at pace while operating within enterprise guardrails and risk appetite.
- Adopting organisational design standards and patterns for significant architectural changes, such as multi or hybrid-cloud hosting, event-driven architecture, integration guardrails and AI adoption at scale.
- Leading, coaching and assuring Solution Architects and Engineers, to develop a strong and collaborative technical team in Payments.
- Applying practical knowledge of payment schemes, standards and end-to-end processing across some or all of Faster Payments, BACS, CHAPS, international payments,
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