PBWM Platforms Principal Architect

Description

This director-level role sets technical direction and designs solutions for the bank's most complex IT systems and platforms, using leading industry approaches to meet the hardest functional and non-functional requirements.

You will be a senior member of the PBWM Architecture team and support the Head of Architecture, often representing the team at group-level forums.

You will also support operational processes outside the Architecture team that need architecture input.

Responsibilities

• Set the bank's strategic architecture direction for one or more specialist areas, such as trading platform development.
• Give deep technical guidance on designing and assessing complex architectures, oversee and coordinate solution architects, and build a culture of continuous learning across the architecture community.
• Lead innovative design and engineering work and complex projects, working with technical experts across the bank to solve hard problems that support the technology strategy.
• Create and promote architecture standards, guidelines and governance policies that ensure consistency, quality and compliance, reducing risks such as breaches, unauthorised access and regulatory violations.
• Track emerging technology trends and patterns, and put forward suitable solutions that match the bank's strategic goals.
• Build and maintain advisory relationships with business partners, architects and engineering teams to get designs adopted and delivered well.
• Recommend the best solutions for the bank's technology needs, explaining decisions clearly and persuasively.
• Support architecture and engineering community initiatives that mentor colleagues, simplify operations, and share and grow knowledge.
• Manage a business function and give significant input to its strategic initiatives, helping shape its policies and procedures and leading several complex, business-wide projects.
• Lead a large team or sub-function, or as an individual contributor, lead organisation-wide projects and act as the go-to technical authority. Coach less experienced specialists and advise on long-term profit, organisational risk and strategic decisions.
• Advise senior functional management and committees, influencing decisions beyond your own function.
• Manage resourcing, budgeting and policy creation for a significant sub-function.
• Escalate breaches of policy or procedure appropriately.
• Foster compliance, make sure regulations are observed, and ensure processes exist that make adherence straightforward.
• Monitor and, where appropriate, influence regulators and advocacy groups on the bank's behalf.
• Understand how your function fits into the division and group to meet overall business goals, and keep up with industry practice and external market developments.
• Use interpretative thinking and advanced analysis to design solutions in complex or sensitive situations.
• Make significant decisions and certain strategic recommendations within your area.
• Negotiate with and influence senior stakeholders inside and outside the company.
• Act as the main contact for key clients and counterparts in other functions and divisions, and serve as the official spokesperson for the function and division.
• Demonstrate the four LEAD leadership behaviours (Listen and be authentic, Energise and inspire, Align across the enterprise, Develop others) and the company's values and mindset.

Requirements

• Significant experience as a senior Solution Architect or in an equivalent senior architecture or CTO-level leadership role.
• Experience designing enterprise-scale integration fabrics that expose business capabilities to clients, colleagues and AI and agentic channels.
• Experience defining architecture patterns for APIs, event streaming, messaging, webhooks and asynchronous processing.
• Experience decoupling customer journeys from systems of record through channel strategies.
• A deep grasp of when to use orchestration and when to use choreography.
• Experience turning strategic direction and project demands into practical solutions.
• A genuine drive to design for simplification, reuse, consistency, scalability, security and performance, in line with architecture standards.
• Strong stakeholder management and communication skills, with the ability to engage engineers, architects, technology leaders, risk and business stakeholders at every level up to CIO and COO.
• Experience working in large, complex, regulated financial services environments.

Conditions

You will be a senior attendee and key decision maker at the PBWM Architecture Review Board.

Some of your time will go to architecture team responsibilities, including governance process improvement and championing the new architecture standard.

As a senior team member, you will advise, guide and mentor colleagues, helping the team grow in size and maturity.