Capability Area Architect

Job Description

Hej Capability Area Architect,

Inter IKEA Group connects IKEA franchisees with range development and suppliers and ensures alignment of the overall IKEA strategic direction. Every day, we strive to develop, produce, and sell products and services that are affordable and accessible to everyone.

This role is positioned in Retail Concept Operations, Business Process Management. You will belong to the Enterprise Architecture team, reporting to the Business Process Manager. In Retail Concept Operations, as part of Retail Concept, we protect, develop, and enable the IKEA Concept across markets and franchisees. We turn the "what" of the IKEA Concept into the "how" of everyday retail operations, making it easy to use, scale, and trust across the value chain.

We take pride in working in progressive ways of working, with empowered teams and strong digital competence. We focus on simple, practical solutions that strengthen both short- and long-term low cost, while supporting consistency and quality in how the IKEA Concept comes to life.

Together, we build ways of working where teams take ownership, collaborate closely, and continuously improve, so we can create meaningful value for IKEA, our franchisees, co-workers, and the many people.

Capability Architecture is where we make sure that all dimensions of process, people, data and technology are held together in each Capability Area, across core businesses, data and technology, and across the full Inter IKEA Group value chain.

Our team is based in Malmö (Sweden) and Delft (The Netherlands). You can be based in either of these offices. We believe that your presence with the team and working the majority of the time in the workplace is important.

About the role

As a Capability Area Architect, you’ll play an important part in the team and bring valuable IKEA knowledge into a new setting. In the coming years, we will continue to develop our digital and architectural landscape and strengthen how processes, people, data and technology are held together across our capability areas and the full IKEA value chain. Your primary focus will be bringing clarity from complexity and helping IKEA develop in an integrated, cost-conscious and future-proof way. You will shape and maintain the architectural direction for a Capability Area so that the capability vision, target state, roadmap and design decisions stay coherent, simple, cost-efficient and future-proof. You help translate strategy into architectural direction, support execution of the roadmap, and secure alignment with end-to-end process architecture, enterprise principles and related capability areas. The impact of our work continues to resonate in homes and hearts across the world.

Ina typical day, you will:

• Define and evolve the target architecture for the Capability Area across the process, people, data and technology dimensions.

• Give input to the Capability Area vision and roadmap, define the architecture needed to support it, and shape the logical roadmap towards the target state together with Capability Area leadership.

• Actively lead and contribute to architecture design, translating target architecture into concrete design decisions, patterns and reference solutions in close collaboration with engineering teams, product and platform owners, and architecture peers.

• Proactively identify and resolve dependencies within the Capability Area and across other capability areas and end-to-end processes before complexity becomes rework.

• Align architecture with Enterprise Architects, contribute to a coherent federated EA governance model, and support decisions in architecture and design forums.

• Set clear architectural frames through guardrails, constraints and fitness functions, enabling autonomous engineering decisions close to delivery while securing alignment with target architecture and standards.

Qualifications

What we’d like you to bring to the table

The role as a Capability Area Architect requires you to:

• Bring a minimum of 3–5 years of relevant experience in architecture, business change, digital transformation or a related field.

• Have a strong analytical and structured approach, with the ability to connect strategy, business needs and architectural implications.

• Have the ability to define target states, logical roadmaps and architectural guardrails that support effective planning and execution.

• Possess strong collaboration skills and experience working across Capability Area leadership, Enterprise Architects, engineers, product teams and other architects.

• Balance long-term architectural integrity with practical business needs and delivery priorities.

• Be a strong communicator, with the ability to explain architecture clearly, frame trade-offs and build trust and buy-in among stakeholders.

• Be commited to enabling simplicity, cost-consciousness and future-proof development across stakeholders and domains.

• Demonstrate the ability to identify cross-domain dependencies and support proactive decision-making across organisational boundaries.

• Have experience working with business capabilities, processes, applications, data and technology architecture.

• Possess a solid understanding of capability modelling, target state design and architectural roadmapping.

• Understand how Capability Areas, Digital Product Areas, Digital Products and Platforms work together within the IKEA Operating Model.

• Demonstrate knowledge of architectural governance, principles, decision forums, and the relationship between enterprise, process, capability and solution architecture.

• Understand agile ways of working, integrated planning and roadmap management, and the role of architecture in prioritisation and sequencing.

• Have proven experience collaborating with cross-functional stakeholders across business and technology environments.

• Possess good knowledge of IKEA business processes, strategies, the IKEA franchise system, vision, culture and values.

• Hold a Bachelor’s degree in computer science, information technology, engineering, business architecture or a related discipline.

It’s a plus if you also:

• Hold TOGAF or a similar architecture certification

Additional Information

We welcome your application

We look forward to receiving your application. We encourage you to apply as soon as possible, as we might start interviewing early for certain roles. If you have any questions about the role or the recruitment process, or if you have a special need that requires accommodation in the recruitment process, feel free to contact the Recruiter Marvin Dodoo (marvin.dodoo 1@inter.ikea.com ) or Hiring Manager David Capdevila ( david.capdevila@inter.ikea.com ).

We always recruit based on values, competence, potential and diversity. Once competence requirements are met, we will first consider impacted co-workers employed in Inter IKEA Systems BV, Inter IKEA Systems Services AB and Inter IKEA Technology Services AB and secondly impacted co-workers at Inter IKEA Group.