Enterprise Architect

Job purpose

We are searching for an exceptional Enterprise Architect to join our network of professional associate consultants. This is a freelance opportunity to work with Delafeld Partners and our clients on a project-by-project basis (outside of IR35). Projects typically range from 3 to 18 months. Flexibility in availability is appreciated, depending on the project size and timeline.

This will be an ‘Enterprise as a Service’ role, blending architectural vision, governance, and guidance across the organisation to ensure that business strategy and technology capabilities are aligned while maintaining operational stability and efficiency, enabling the organisation to scale efficiently, deliver exceptional customer experiences, and adapt to the fast-moving retail landscape.

You will be responsible for shaping and governing the organisation’s technology architecture to support the retail strategy across stores, e-commerce, supply chain, and customer engagement platforms.

Key Responsibilities

Architecture Strategy & Vision

• Define and maintain the enterprise architecture strategy aligned to the organisation’s retail and digital strategy.
• Develop and communicate the technology roadmap and future-state architecture supporting omnichannel retail, including stores, e-commerce and customer platforms.
• Translate business strategy into architectural principles, standards, and capabilities across customer, product, supply chain and operations.
• Ensure technology architecture supports scalable growth, customer experience, and operational efficiency.

Retail Technology Landscape

Lead architecture across key retail technology domains ensuring these systems operate as an integrated ecosystem supporting seamless omnichannel customer journeys. Domains include:

• E-commerce and digital commerce platforms
• Point of Sale (POS) and store systems
• Customer data platforms and CRM
• Order management systems (OMS)
• Product information management (PIM)
• Inventory and warehouse management systems (WMS)
• Supply chain and logistics platforms
• Data and analytics platforms
• Integration and API ecosystems

Architecture Governance

• Establish and lead the enterprise architecture governance framework.
• Define and maintain architectural principles, standards, and best practices.
• Lead architecture review boards to ensure solutions align with enterprise architecture.
• Ensure new technology solutions comply with security, compliance, and data governance standards.
• Manage architecture exceptions and ensure technical decisions align with long-term strategy.

Business & Technology Alignment

• Partner with senior business leaders across Digital, Retail Operations, Supply Chain, Marketing, and Finance.
• Translate business priorities into technology capabilities and architectural roadmaps.
• Provide strategic guidance on technology investment decisions.
• Ensure architecture supports retail innovation, customer engagement, and operational efficiency.

Programme & Project Support

• Support major programmes and projects with architectural guidance.
• Ensure solution designs are aligned with enterprise architecture.
• Provide oversight on complex technology initiatives.

Technology Innovation & Market Awareness

• Evaluate new technologies that could enhance customer experience or operational efficiency.
• Monitor emerging technologies relevant to retail such as:
• AI and data-driven personalisation
• Customer analytics and segmentation
• Cloud platforms
• Microservices and API ecosystems
• Retail automation and supply chain optimisation

Vendor & Technology Ecosystem

• Support technology vendor selection and architecture design for third-party platforms.
• Provide architectural input into procurement and technology sourcing decisions.
• Ensure vendor solutions integrate effectively within the enterprise architecture.

Architecture Capability

• Build and maintain architecture documentation and repositories.
• Promote architecture practices across technology and delivery teams.
• Support the development of architecture skills across the organisation.
• Mentor solution architects and technical leaders.

Technical Knowledge

Strong understanding of multiple architecture domains including:

• Application architecture
• Data and analytics architecture
• Integration and API architecture
• Cloud and infrastructure architecture
• Security and identity architecture

Experience with modern platforms and approaches such as:

• Cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, GCP)
• Microservices and event-driven architectures
• API management platforms
• Modern commerce platforms (e.g., Shopify, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Adobe Commerce)
• Data platforms and analytics ecosystems

Business Skills

• Strong strategic thinking and business acumen.
• Ability to translate complex technical concepts into business language.
• Experience supporting technology investment decisions.

Leadership & Communication

• Strong stakeholder management and influencing skills.
• Ability to communicate architecture vision across technical and non-technical audiences.
• Excellent facilitation, presentation, and collaboration skills.

Qualifications

• Computer Science, Engineering or similar degree or equivalent experience.
• Formal training and/or qualifications in TOGAF, Agile SCRUM, SAFE, SDLC, CX, ITIL or similar.

Skills and Experience

• 10–15+ years of experience in IT, digital, or technology leadership roles.
• Proven experience in enterprise architecture or senior solution architecture roles in retail, consumer or e-commerce environments.
• Experience designing and evolving large-scale enterprise systems.
• Track record of influencing senior stakeholders and driving technology strategy.

Attributes

• You thrive in a fast-paced client focused environment.
• You are a self-starter that handles ambiguity, solves problems and makes things happen with limited direction.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to focus on client outcomes whilst protecting our commercial position with the client and enhancing our reputation.
• You focus on working collaboratively with the Delafeld team to make each other successful.

Location: Hybrid – 2 days a week Wakefield office.

Contract type: Outside of IR35, contractor agreement based on statements of work.

Commitment: Full time 3-6 Months

About Delafeld Partners

We live and breathe business transformation. Tech is a huge enabler of business transformation, so we help organisations to build peak performance tech teams, so they can focus on long-term business growth.

Our clients come to us for two different reasons:

There’s a fire to fight in the tech team - maybe there’s a capability or capacity gap within the existing team and they need a senior tech leader or technical expert to join the team quickly.

Or maybe they’re looking for business growth and know they need to understand their level of tech maturity and need to build a strategy to help their business reach the next level of growth.

Our team of experts are all ex-C suite, senior tech leaders or digital experts. We know the challenges organisations face, and we’ve got a team of experienced professionals on our bench who can step in to help you build the capability and capacity you need to reach the next level of growth.

We are now looking to expand our trusted team of experts who want to join a team that aligns to our core values. We want a team who are open to debate about the key issues, where everyone’s voice is heard and will commit to a decision, holding each other accountable and delivering results for our clients.