Head of Architecture

All the details
Summary
As the Head of Architecture for Colleague technology, you will be accountable for HR, Finance and End User Compute portfolio for our stores and support centres. You will define and own the full architectural vision and strategy, architecture blueprints, guardrails, outcome & capability led transition roadmaps. You will lead a team of architects with a wide area of influence across solution architecture, engineering, delivery, product management and key business stakeholders to enable the implementation of your target. You will decide on the partner strategy for your area and own the TCO and simplification of your landscape.

What You'll Do

• Strategic Architecture Leadership: Own and drive the architectural vision, strategy, and roadmap for a £20m technology landscape supporting £14B in trading revenue, ensuring alignment with business goals and simplification of a 600+ application estate.
• Technology Direction & Governance: Define target architectures, standards, and transitional blueprints; oversee technology selection, lifecycle management, and ensure compliance with security, regulatory, and quality frameworks.
• Transformation & Innovation: Lead the transition from monolithic systems to a data-centric, composable, event-driven architecture; drive efficiency, innovation, and TCO reduction through simplification and modernisation.
• Collaboration & Stakeholder Engagement: Partner with senior executives, product, engineering, and business stakeholders to shape digital transformation initiatives, ensuring architectural principles guide decision-making and investment.
• Leadership & Community Building: Lead and inspire architecture teams and 'Digital Champions', fostering a culture of innovation, mentorship, and continuous improvement across the enterprise architecture community.

Who You Are

• Enterprise Architecture Expertise: 15+ years' experience leading large-scale architecture strategies and digital transformations, with mastery in architecture modelling, governance frameworks, and TCO-driven decision-making.
• Technical Domain Mastery: Deep knowledge of End User Compute (EUC) services, identity and access management, collaboration platforms (Microsoft 365, Google Workspace), and enterprise HR and Finance systems (Oracle HCM, Workday, SAP SuccessFactors, S/4HANA).
• Strategic & Innovative Thinking: Proven ability to evaluate and adopt emerging technologies, aligning complex architectures with business outcomes to drive innovation, simplification, and competitive advantage.
• Leadership & Change Management: Inspirational leader with experience developing high-performing, cross-functional architecture teams and driving enterprise-wide transformation through agile and collaborative delivery models.
• Stakeholder & Commercial Acumen: Strong executive influencing, partner management, and vendor negotiation skills, combining strategic vision with commercial insight, risk awareness, and compliance expertise.

What's in it for you?
Working at M&S means being part of something bigger - helping to deliver quality, value and service to millions of customers every day. We're inclusive, fast-moving and always evolving, with a strong sense of purpose and a focus on doing the right thing.

Here are just a few of the benefits that make working here even more rewarding:

• 20% colleague discount on all M&S products and many third-party brands for you and someone in your household, available once you've completed your probation
• Competitive holiday allowance with the option to buy more
• Discretionary bonus schemes linked to your performance and ours
• Strong pension and life assurance to help plan for the future
• Tailored induction and training to support your development from day one
• Exclusive perks and savings through our M&S Choices portal
• Market-leading family policies, including parental, adoption and neonatal leave
• 24/7 wellbeing support, including virtual GP access and mental health services
• One paid volunteer day a year to support a cause that matters to you

Everyone's welcome
We are ambitious about the future of retail. We're disrupting, innovating and leading the industry into a more conscientious, inspiring digital era. We're transforming how we work together and offering our most exciting opportunities yet. Marks & Spencer strives to be an inclusive organisation, trusted and admired by our colleagues, customers and suppliers. Join us and make change happen.

We are committed to building diverse and representative teams, where everyone can bring their whole selves to work and be at their best. We support each other and work together to win together.

If you feel you'd benefit from any support or reasonable adjustments during any stage of the recruitment process, please don't hesitate to let us know when completing your application. This information will be picked up by our team, so we can try and put steps in place to help you be at your best through this process.

#hybridrole