Director of Platform Strategy & Enterprise Architecture

Director of Platform Strategy & Enterprise Architecture

Investment, Data & Core Platform Architecture

UK | Hybrid

Permanent

A senior enterprise architecture leader is required to shape the future of a complex, business-critical platform estate within a global financial services environment. This is not a programme management, delivery oversight or narrow solution architecture role. We are looking for a senior architecture leader who can influence platform strategy, guide technology investment decisions, shape target-state architecture and bring stronger alignment across platforms, data, engineering and business capabilities.

The role will suit someone who understands how investment, operational, data and servicing platforms need to work together across a large regulated organisation. You will be expected to provide architectural direction that balances near-term delivery requirements with long-term scalability, resilience, reuse and cost efficiency. You will work closely with senior leaders across Platform, Engineering, Data, Architecture, Product, Operations and Technology Delivery to ensure major technology decisions are joined-up, commercially sensible and aligned to long-term enterprise outcomes.

• Clearer future-state architecture across critical platforms.
• Better alignment between platform roadmaps, data strategy, engineering delivery and business priorities.
• Reduced duplication and fragmentation across the technology estate.
• Increased reuse of existing capabilities, patterns and services.
• Stronger investment decisions based on cost, value, risk, resilience and long-term sustainability.
• Better visibility of architectural risk, platform divergence and technical debt.
• More consistent data, integration and platform design.
• Improved governance without unnecessary bureaucracy.
• Stronger confidence from senior stakeholders that technology decisions are joined-up and future-ready.

Key Responsibilities

• Own architectural direction across a portfolio of business-critical investment, data and operational platforms.
• Shape platform strategy, roadmap direction and target-state architecture across a complex enterprise technology estate.
• Advise senior stakeholders on technology and investment decisions, ensuring choices support long-term business value, scalability and resilience.
• Influence platform, engineering, data and product leaders on prioritisation, solution design, data design and architectural trade-offs.
• Drive simplification across the estate by reducing duplication, fragmentation and unnecessary divergence.
• Promote reuse of existing capabilities, shared services, architecture patterns and common data approaches.
• Ensure platform roadmaps are aligned to agreed architecture principles, technology strategy and future-state operating requirements.
• Provide oversight of major initiatives, identifying architectural risk, misalignment, duplication or design decisions that could create long-term complexity.
• Support stronger interoperability across platforms, data flows, integration layers and operational processes.
• Guide technology decisions across mixed environments, including legacy platforms, modern engineering approaches, cloud-enabled capabilities, data platforms and integration services.
• Strengthen architecture governance while keeping decision-making pragmatic, commercially focused and delivery-aware.
• Use evidence, data and architectural insight to challenge decisions, support investment cases and improve accountability.

Key Experience

• Strong experience in enterprise architecture, platform architecture, investment platform architecture or technology strategy within a large, complex organisation.
• Proven ability to advise senior stakeholders on platform strategy, architecture direction and technology investment decisions.
• Experience shaping target-state architecture across business-critical platforms, data platforms, operational systems or systems of record.
• Strong understanding of platform modernisation, integration, data architecture, workflow, operational resilience and scalable technology design.
• Experience aligning platform roadmaps to enterprise architecture principles and long-term business outcomes.
• Ability to reduce complexity through standardisation, reuse, simplification and better architectural decision-making.
• Strong understanding of how data standards, data flows, controls and reporting requirements influence platform architecture.
• Experience working with senior leaders across Engineering, Product, Data, Operations, Risk, Security and Architecture.
• Ability to balance short-term delivery pressure with long-term sustainability, scalability, cost efficiency and control.
• Experience operating in financial services, asset management, wealth, pensions, insurance, banking or another highly regulated environment.
• Credibility with both technical teams and executive stakeholders.
• Ability to provide architectural leadership through influence, not just formal authority.

Ideal Candidate Profile

The strongest candidate will be a senior architecture leader who has worked across complex platform estates and can influence decisions at enterprise level.

They should be able to challenge fragmented thinking, bring structure to ambiguous platform problems and help senior stakeholders make better technology decisions. This person needs to be commercially aware, technically credible and pragmatic enough to ensure architecture guidance is adopted by delivery teams.

This is a role for someone who can operate across strategy, governance and execution — not someone who only produces architecture documents or reviews designs after decisions have already been made.