Head of Business Architecture & Analysis

Position: Head of Business Architecture & Analysis
Head of Business Architecture & Analysis

Location - London (hybrid working)

About the role:

We are recruiting a Head of Business Architecture & Analysis to join a central Service Transformation team within a large, complex, mission-driven organisation.

This is a senior, hands-on role focused on business architecture, service design, process improvement and business analysis across professional services. It is not a digital, IT or systems delivery role, technology is an enabler, but the core focus is on how the organisation works end-to-end and how services can be designed and improved around users.

You will play a key role in shaping future-state services, aligning organisational capabilities to strategic goals, and improving service quality and efficiency for staff, students and other stakeholders.

What you'll be doing:

- Act as the lead for Business Architecture and Business Analysis within a wider Service Transformation function

- Work closely with senior leaders to ensure business design and service improvements align to the organisation's enterprise vision and agreed frameworks

- Lead discovery and design for future-state professional services, focusing on capabilities, value streams, processes and user experience

- Run hands-on design and discovery work (workshops, mapping, analysis, service design sprints) to understand current-state issues and define practical improvements

- Develop business-architecture-led roadmaps that balance quick wins with longer-term structural improvements

- Create and maintain core artefacts such as:

Business capability models

Value streams

Service and product taxonomies

Stakeholder and organisational views

- Support portfolio-level decision-making by applying business architecture techniques to identify where investment will deliver the greatest value

- Provide professional leadership to a small team of Business Analysts, setting standards, coaching and developing capability (this is not a large line-management role)

- Work collaboratively with change, service design and architecture colleagues to ensure joined-up delivery across transformation initiatives

What this role is not...

To be clear, this role is not:

- An IT delivery role

- A digital transformation or systems implementation role

- A technical architecture or solution design role

What we're looking for:

Essential experience:

- Significant experience in business architecture, business analysis or service design within large, complex organisations

- Proven delivery of organisation-wide service or operating model change

- Strong experience working in federated or matrix environments where influence matters more than authority

- Ability to operate confidently with senior stakeholders and executive sponsors

- Experience balancing strategic thinking with hands-on analysis and design work

Desirable:

- Experience in higher education, public sector or similarly complex service environments

- Familiarity with benchmarking, capability maturity models or service performance frameworks

- Knowledge of Lean, process improvement or service excellence approaches

Skills and approach:

- Pragmatic, structured and analytical thinker

- Comfortable navigating complex organisational dynamics

- Strong facilitator who can bring diverse stakeholders together

- Curious, outward-looking and improvement-focused

- Collaborative leader who develops others while staying close to the work

Why apply?

This is a rare opportunity to:

- Shape how a large organisation designs and delivers its services

- Work at genuine enterprise scale while staying hands-on

- Lead and mature a Business Analysis and Business Architecture capability

- Be part of a collaborative, values-driven transformation function