Head of Architecture

Job Description

Overview

We are seeking a visionary Head of Architecture based in London to lead the Bank’s architectural strategy and play a pivotal role in our multi‑year transformation toward an agentic, intelligence‑driven Target Operating Model (TOM). You will own the end‑to‑end enterprise architecture, modernise our design principles, and guide a talented team of architects through this evolution.

The Team

You will lead a small team of enterprise and domain architects and report directly to the CTO, working within a collaborative Technology Leadership Team. Technology is foundational to our transformation, and architecture plays a central, integrative role in re‑platforming the Bank for an intelligent future.

The Role

As Head of Architecture, you will:

• Define and own the current‑state, transitional, and target‑state architectures across business, data, applications, and technology domains.
• Design and implement the architecture needed to support an agentic, AI‑enabled Target Operating Model, including autonomy layers, orchestration patterns, and human‑in‑the‑loop principles.
• Update the architecture function with modern workflows, flexible governance, and streamlined guardrails for continuous delivery.
• Lead, mentor and develop a high‑performing architecture team, fostering modern engineering practices and capability maturity.
• Shape strategic technology roadmaps, partnering with senior stakeholders to identify transformational opportunities across Payments, FX, Data, AI, and Platform domains.
• Lead complex, multi‑disciplinary change across legacy and modern systems, driving architectural simplification and scalable patterns.
• Work closely with engineering and change teams to deliver measurable business outcomes, translating architectural intent into practical execution frameworks and incremental value.

Responsibilities

• Develop enterprise architecture models, reference architectures, and standards aligned to our agentic TOM.
• Translate roadmaps into modular work packages enabling iterative, continuous value delivery.
• Champion event‑driven, microservices‑based, cloud‑native architectures and their associated patterns.
• Foster adaptive design, engineering excellence, and feedback‑driven evolution across teams.
• Govern architectural decisions pragmatically—balancing innovation, technical debt, and regulatory expectations.
• Act as a trusted advisor to senior executives on strategic technology decisions and business‑architecture alignment.

Qualifications

Essential

• Proven experience leading architecture functions in high‑change, transformation‑heavy environments.
• Deep expertise in Payments, FX, or high‑scale transaction‑processing platforms.
• Hands‑on experience architecting distributed, event‑driven, microservices‑oriented systems.
• Strong communication and stakeholder‑influencing skills with senior leadership.
• Experience working across modern and legacy technologies, including pathways for modernisation.
• Comfortable in regulated environments with strong cross‑functional engagement.
• Familiarity with architecture frameworks such as TOGAF, ArchiMate, or similar.

Highly Desirable

• Experience with AI, agentic architectures, intelligent orchestration, or autonomous workflows.
• Experience in cross‑border FX and payments.
• Background in systems engineering, data architecture, or platform engineering.
• Technical degree required.

Additional Information

• Hybrid working (4 days on-site)
• Contributory personal pension plan: - Minimum: Employee 2% and Employer 7%. Employer matches contributions in 1% increments to a maximum of: Employee 5% and Employer 10%
• Life Assurance – 4 times annual salary
• Group Income Protection
• Private Medical Insurance – this may include cover for partner and or children at company cost. Cover includes Optical, Dental and Audiology
• Discretionary Bonus
• Competitive Annual Leave
• 2 Volunteering Days
• Benefit Hub