Interim Chief Architect

Major UK Financial Services Business
• Contract
• 2-3 days onsite in Swindon (Hybrid)

Most architecture roles ask you to advise. This one asks you to decide. Our client is a major, UK financial services business undergoing a significant technology transformation — and they need a Chief Architect who will be the technical conscience of the organisation: someone who owns the architectural direction, chairs the review process, and is genuinely empowered to say no.

The incoming CTO has a clear mandate and ExCo backing to transform the technology function. The architecture capability is being reset — moving away from an academic, diagram-heavy function towards one that is hands‑on, interventionist, and directly accountable for the quality of every significant technology decision made in the business. The Chief Architect will report directly to the CTO, sit across the entire enterprise technology estate, and have real authority over what gets built and how.

• Owning the enterprise technology architecture position — defining and maintaining the principles, patterns, and standards that govern how the organisation builds, buys, and integrates technology.
• Chairing the Architecture Review Board with genuine sign‑off authority. Significant technology decisions will not proceed without your approval. This is a gate‑keeping role, not an advisory one.
• Enforcing an 'adopt, don't adapt' principle across vendor and platform selection — pushing back on customisation requests that create long‑term technical debt, and holding that line under commercial pressure.
• Producing and maintaining Architecture Decision Records that create a clear, traceable history of why architectural choices were made — and ensuring the organisation builds on solid, documented foundations.
• Providing architectural leadership across three concurrent engineering missions: legacy estate retirement, business process automation, and new digital proposition development.
• Defining the enterprise AI architecture strategy — how the organisation adopts AI safely, effectively, and in a way that is fit for a regulated financial services environment. Including RAG‑based approaches, LLM integration patterns, and AI governance frameworks.
• Working as a true peer to the incoming Head of Engineering — jointly owning the standards that delivery teams build to, and ensuring architecture and engineering are pulling in the same direction.
• Reshaping the architecture function itself — moving from a team that produces documentation to one that drives outcomes, with a small number of solution and technical architects working in an embedded, accountable model.

• Real authority — the Architecture Review Board has teeth. You will be the person who says no, and the organisation will back you.
• A CTO who gets it — your direct line manager has hired architects before, knows what good looks like, and will not mistake busyness for impact.
• A blank sheet on AI — you will define how this organisation uses AI across the enterprise. That's a rare opportunity to build something properly from the start.

If your CV shows a career of producing architectural diagrams and attending design meetings, this probably isn't the right role. If it shows a career of making architectural decisions, enforcing them, and being able to point to the outcomes — read on.

• A technical or enterprise architecture background — you have built things, not just modelled them. You can get into the detail of a design and identify where it will fail before it does.
• Deep understanding of API‑first and event‑driven integration: REST, Graph
  
  QL, async messaging, event streaming, and API gateway patterns.
• Genuine enterprise scope — you have operated across a whole organisation, not just within a single programme or product line. You understand how architectural decisions in one area create problems in another.
• Azure depth and API‑first fluency — the estate is Azure‑based and the architectural direction is heavily integration and assembly‑led. REST, event‑driven architecture, and API gateway patterns should be second nature.
• A track record of enforcement, not just advice — you can point to a forum you ran with real authority, a design you sent back, a standard you held to under pressure. That story matters more than your job title.
• Financial services experience — ideally in a regulated, enterprise environment. Familiarity with FCA obligations, Consumer Duty, and the operational realities of a compliance‑heavy technology estate.
• Availability for approximately 2‑3 days per week in Swindon — the technology team is based there and on‑site presence through the transformation period is expected.