Lead Solution Architect

We’re Kingfisher, a team made up of over 74,000 passionate people who bring Kingfisher – and all our other brands: B&Q, Screwfix, Brico Depot, Castorama and Koçtaş – to life. That’s right, we’re big, but we have ambitions to become even bigger and even better. We want to become the leading home improvement company and grow the largest community of home improvers in the world.

And that’s where you come in.

At Kingfisher our customers come from all walks of life, and so do we. We want to ensure that all colleagues, future colleagues, and applicants to Kingfisher are treated equally regardless of age, gender, marital or civil partnership status, colour, ethnic or national origin, culture, religious belief, philosophical belief, political opinion, disability, gender identity, gender expression or sexual orientation.

We are open to flexible and agile working; therefore, we offer colleagues a blend of working from home and our offices. This role will require a weekly presence in our Screwfix head office in Yeovil.

Join us as a Lead Solution Architect and play a pivotal role in steering IT solutions to support Screwfix to deliver on their business goals through technology. We’re looking for someone with strong experience in retail technology environments, with a deep understanding of how technology supports core retail operations.

• Architectural Decisions: Steer the architectural decision‑making within the banner, offering expert guidance to ensure banner decisions are in sync with business and technical requirements, while maintaining compliance with governance steps.
• Strategic Design
  
  Collaboration:
  
  Collaborate with stakeholders to craft end‑to‑end high‑level designs that mesh with existing systems, achieve business aims, and align to architectural principles.
• Product Selections: Support banner owned product selection processes, providing guidance to support their decision making, ensuring that the most suitable products and technologies are chosen to meet business capability requirements, align with architecture principles and technology strategy.
• Architectural Leadership: Provide architecture leadership and guidance across banner projects, fostering the adoption cloud‑native technologies and identifying effective architectural patterns.
• Banner Architecture Knowledge: Produce and maintain key Banner Architecture knowledge base and artefacts; conceptual as‑is / to‑be and transition state roadmap reflecting business and IT strategies.
• Stakeholder Management: Serve as the chief architectural liaison for Screwfix, ensuring stakeholders are clearly informed and engaged with project direction and outcomes.
• Line Management: Lead and develop Solution Architects aligned to or working on Screwfix activity, guiding their contributions to align with strategic objectives and fostering professional growth.
• Enhancing Architectural Practice: Actively lead the enhancement of the Architecture chapter, innovating and advancing architectural practices and methods.

• Strong leadership in stakeholder engagement and influence, orchestrating colleague collaboration to support banner‑led architectural decisions.
• Skilled in clarifying complex technical terms, adeptly presenting sophisticated IT concepts to non‑technical audiences to support clear understanding and informed decision‑making.
• Extensive experience architecting integration solutions that span business, data, applications, and technology domains.
• Understands cloud technologies, with a particular emphasis on implementing and cloud‑native integration patterns.
• Possesses a strategic interest in diverse IT technologies and their impact on business innovation and efficiency.

• We listen to our customers and colleagues.
• We innovate products and experiences to stay ahead.

• We do the right thing.
• We invest in our people and build great teams.

• We focus externally, globally and build the long term.
• We experiment and share our learnings.