Senior Enterprise Architect (Contract)

Detailed Description From Employer:

Location: Manchester, Leeds, Edinburgh, or Bristol (Hybrid - 2 days per week onsite)

Contract Type: Contract (12 months)
Rate: Competitive Day Rate

The Role

We are seeking experienced Enterprise Architects to join a large-scale enterprise architecture function supporting multiple business domains, including Insurance (IP&I), Consumer, Commercial, Data & AI, Enterprise Functions, and Technology Services & Infrastructure (TS&I).

As an Enterprise Architect, you will define and govern enterprise architecture across complex transformation programmes. Working within agreed architectural principles and technology guardrails, you will shape end-to-end architecture, support strategic technology roadmaps, and ensure solutions are scalable, secure, resilient, and aligned with business objectives.

You will collaborate closely with engineering, platform, delivery, and business teams to maintain architectural consistency while enabling pragmatic and efficient delivery. This role requires broad technical expertise spanning applications, integration, cloud, infrastructure, and data architecture, alongside the ability to influence stakeholders across multiple business and technology domains.

A key aspect of the role is helping to evolve the organisation's architecture capability through modern practices such as Architecture as Code, composable architecture, and reusable architecture components.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop enterprise architecture strategies, target-state ("North Star") architectures, and technology roadmaps.
• Drive the adoption of Architecture as Code and modern architectural practices across programmes.
• Provide architectural leadership, standards, principles, and technology guardrails aligned with business strategy.
• Define transition architectures and support delivery teams throughout implementation.
• Produce high-quality architecture artefacts, including solution designs, Architecture Decision Records (ADRs), and capability models.
• Design scalable hybrid cloud, application, integration, and data architectures.
• Define API-led and event-driven integration patterns across enterprise platforms.
• Collaborate with programme and workstream leads to shape scope, requirements, solution architecture, and delivery roadmaps.
• Identify cross-domain dependencies, technical risks, and mitigation strategies while supporting architecture governance.
• Build strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders to ensure successful delivery of enterprise transformation initiatives.

Essential Skills & Experience

• Extensive experience delivering Enterprise Architecture across large-scale enterprise transformation programmes.
• Strong knowledge across multiple architecture disciplines, including business, application, integration, data, infrastructure, and cloud architecture.
• Practical experience implementing Architecture as Code concepts and modern architectural tooling.
• Strong understanding of composable architecture principles and reusable architecture components.
• Experience defining hybrid cloud architectures and modern hosting strategies.
• Expertise in API-led, event-driven, and microservices-based architecture patterns.
• Strong understanding of non-functional requirements, including security, resilience, availability, scalability, and regulatory compliance.
• Experience working across multiple business domains and collaborating with engineering and delivery teams.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills with the ability to influence senior technical and business leaders.
• Strong analytical and governance experience, balancing strategic direction with practical delivery.

Desirable Skills & Experience

Experience in one or more of the following areas would be advantageous:

• Financial Services or Banking
• Insurance
• Payments
• Loans
• Cards
• Pensions
• Capital Markets
• Data Loss Prevention (DLP)
• Blockchain
• Cloud Services
• Machine Learning
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Agentic AI
• Enterprise Architecture platforms and tooling