Head of Architecture
Overview
We are seeking a visionary Head of Architecture based in London to lead the Bank’s architectural strategy and play a pivotal role in our multi‑year transformation toward an agentic, intelligence‑driven Target Operating Model (TOM). You will own the end‑to‑end enterprise architecture, modernise our design principles, and guide a talented team of architects through this evolution.
The Team
You will lead a small team of enterprise and domain architects and report directly to the CTO, working within a collaborative Technology Leadership Team. Technology is foundational to our transformation, and architecture plays a central, integrative role in re‑platforming the Bank for an intelligent future.
The Role
As Head of Architecture, you will:
- Define and own the current‑state, transitional, and target‑state architectures across business, data, applications, and technology domains.
- Design and implement the architecture needed to support an agentic, AI‑enabled Target Operating Model, including autonomy layers, orchestration patterns, and human‑in‑the‑loop principles.
- Update the architecture function with modern workflows, flexible governance, and streamlined guardrails for continuous delivery.
- Lead, mentor and develop a high‑performing architecture team, fostering modern engineering practices and capability maturity.
- Shape strategic technology roadmaps, partnering with senior stakeholders to identify transformational opportunities across Payments, FX, Data, AI, and Platform domains.
- Lead complex, multi‑disciplinary change across legacy and modern systems, driving architectural simplification and scalable patterns.
- Work closely with engineering and change teams to deliver measurable business outcomes, translating architectural intent into practical execution frameworks and incremental value.
Responsibilities
- Develop enterprise architecture models, reference architectures, and standards aligned to our agentic TOM.
- Translate roadmaps into modular work packages enabling iterative, continuous value delivery.
- Champion event‑driven, microservices‑based, cloud‑native architectures and their associated patterns.
- Foster adaptive design, engineering excellence, and feedback‑driven evolution across teams.
- Govern architectural decisions pragmatically—balancing innovation, technical debt, and regulatory expectations.
- Act as a trusted advisor to senior executives on strategic technology decisions and business‑architecture alignment.
Qualifications
Essential
- Proven experience leading architecture functions in high‑change, transformation‑heavy environments.
- Deep expertise in Payments, FX, or high‑scale transaction‑processing platforms.
- Hands‑on experience architecting distributed, event‑driven, microservices‑oriented systems.
- Strong communication and stakeholder‑influencing skills with senior leadership.
- Experience working across modern and legacy technologies, including pathways for modernisation.
- Comfortable in regulated environments with strong cross‑functional engagement.
- Familiarity with architecture frameworks such as TOGAF, ArchiMate, or similar.
Highly Desirable
- Experience with AI, agentic architectures, intelligent orchestration, or autonomous workflows.
- Experience in cross‑border FX and payments.
- Background in systems engineering, data architecture, or platform engineering.
- Technical degree required.
Additional Information
- Hybrid working (4 days on-site)
- Contributory personal pension plan: - Minimum: Employee 2% and Employer 7%. Employer matches contributions in 1% increments to a maximum of: Employee 5% and Employer 10%
- Life Assurance – 4 times annual salary
- Group Income Protection
- Private Medical Insurance – this may include cover for partner and or children at company cost. Cover includes Optical, Dental and Audiology
- Discretionary Bonus
- Competitive Annual Leave
- 2 Volunteering Days
- Benefit Hub