Enterprise Architect

Summary

As an Enterprise Architect, you will be a technical leader focused on ensuring our technology plans are coherent and deliver strategic outcomes for your business area. We are hiring for three positions - one in Foods, one in Fashion, Home & Beauty, and one in Business - each requiring a deep understanding of the strategic objectives for that area, and the ability to define and describe a pragmatic technology path that will move us towards these, along with the practical steps required to realise them.

You will own Enterprise Architecture roadmaps and apply industry best practices to support strategic objectives. Collaborating with vendors, senior partners, and across product tribes, you will ensure alignment of architectural, business, product, and technical priorities. You will also be naturally curious and creative, understanding how new technology can help us leapfrog the competition and enable strategic objectives.

Your key accountabilities will include:

• Develop and secure stakeholder buy-in for 1-3-year target architectures, transitional states, blueprints, principles, standards, and costed roadmaps for the business area, ensuring alignment with strategic objectives, business priorities, and compliance requirements while managing TCO and simplification goals.
• Lead architecture governance for the business area, establishing robust policies, frameworks, and guardrails; ensure adherence to security, regulatory, and quality standards; oversee technology life-cycle management, vendor/technology selection, and alignment to pan-M&S architecture standards.
• Inspire and guide cross-functional teams, fostering a collaborative, high-performing architecture community; act as mentor and coach; represent the Architecture Community to ensure alignment across the enterprise and advocate for the business area's technical direction.
• Drive communities of interest to experiment, research, and shape future architectures; identify opportunities for optimisation and efficiency; deliver solutions that simplify the landscape, reduce costs, and enhance scalability, reliability, and business outcomes.
• Build and maintain strong relationships with vendors and partners; influence external technology roadmaps; support commercial negotiations; and ensure cross-functional collaboration effectiveness, priority alignment, and stakeholder satisfaction.

Your skills and experience will include:

• Significant experience with enterprise architecture modelling (Archi Mate, UML, BPMN) and developing enterprise models across business capability, product, service domain, and data; strong understanding of architectural patterns, integration, modern engineering practices, compliance, and risk management at enterprise scale.
• Proven ability to assess and align emerging architecture and technology trends with business requirements; deep knowledge of current and emerging platforms/technologies in area of expertise; recognised as an internal thought leader with strong commercial acumen.
• Track record in delivering large-scale digital transformation at pace; advanced ability to translate complex, ambiguous objectives into pragmatic, coherent target architectures and actionable roadmaps that deliver customer-centric outcomes.
• Skilled at leading and coaching high-performing architecture teams, building communities of interest, and working collaboratively with diverse stakeholders; ability to influence senior leaders and maintain credibility with architects, engineers, and technical teams.
• Excellent written and verbal communication at all levels; adept at risk analysis, benefit assessment, and solving complex architectural challenges; experienced in change management and Agile delivery; driven by continuous improvement, innovation, and natural curiosity about business and technology trends.

Being a part of M&S is exactly that - playing your part to bring the magic of M&S to our customers every day. We're an inclusive, dynamic, exciting, and ever evolving business built on doing the right thing and bringing exceptional quality, value, service to every customer, whenever, wherever and however they want to shop with us.

Here are some of the benefits we offer that make working for M&S just that little bit more special:

• After completing your probationary period, you'll receive 20% colleague discount across all M&S products and many of our third-party brands for you and a member of your household.
• Competitive holiday entitlement with the potential to buy extra holiday days!
• Discretionary bonus schemes awarded based on how you achieve your personal objectives and our performance as a business.
• A generous Defined Contribution Pension Scheme and Life Assurance.
• A dedicated welcome to our teams with a tailored induction and a wide range of training programmes to develop your skills.
• Amazing perks and discounts via our M&S Choices portal to maximise your financial and personal wellbeing.
• Industry-leading parental, adoption and neonatal…