Head of Architecture Standards, Patterns & Governance London | Hybrid Up to £155k Bonus & Excellent Benefits (Felxible) Lead the Architecture Practice & Domain Centre of Excellence that underpins all change portfolios—front-to-back platform migrations, hybrid-cloud adoption, data-mesh enablement and legacy retirement. Own the meta-model, reference architectures, and policy-as-code controls to industrialise delivery, cut run-costs and satisfy global regulatory obligations. Core Accountabilities Architecture Operating Model – refine and enforce the TOGAF-aligned meta-model, artefact taxonomy and governance cadence across Technology domains. Policy-as-Code Automation – embed Open Policy Agent (or equivalent) into CI/CD and cloud pipelines to shift compliance “left”; target ≥90 % automated control coverage. Domain Standards & Reusable Components – curate, publish and measure reuse of cloud landing zones, data-platform blueprints, integration patterns and security baselines. Architecture Review Authority – chair Enterprise & Solution Design Boards; arbitrate design disputes and report KPI adherence to ELT. Practice Leadership – line-manage 5-10 Domain Architects (Cloud, Data, Integration, Workplace, Security) plus a methods/tooling squad; run the global community-of-practice. Regulatory & Risk Alignment – assure architectures meet FCA / PRA, GDPR and regional regulations; provide board-level traceability on resilience and data-protection controls. Transformation Acceleration – partner with programme directors to retire legacy estates, adopt event-driven platforms, and enable AI/ML workloads through compliant cloud patterns. Candidate Profile – Must Have 15 yrs enterprise architecture in global, regulated FS or equivalent complexity. Demonstrable ownership of an EA Operating Model and governance framework at enterprise scale (>5,000 users, multi-region). Deep hands-on expertise in two or more domains: hybrid-cloud, data platforms, integration, workplace, security. Proven deployment of policy-driven automation (OPA, Sentinel, Kyverno or similar) integrated with Terraform/Ansible IaC. Track record leading distributed architect teams / CoEs and motivating senior practitioners. Executive-level stakeholder management; comfortable defending architecture ROI to CIO/CTO and board committees. Certifications: TOGAF (or equivalent) and cloud (Azure highly favoured; AWS/GCP advantageous). Desirable Extras Core-banking or investment-platform modernisation experience (Aladdin, CRIMS, SimCorp, State Street Alpha). Familiarity with BIAN, BCF or other capability frameworks. Knowledge-graph / AI-assisted modelling exposure. MBA or comparable commercial qualification.
Head of Architecture Standards, Patterns & Governance