**Enterprise Architect - £70-85,000 per annum + benefits e.g. LGPS pension (opportunity for a market supplement DOE) – West London**
We are recruiting on behalf of a local council who are embarking on a significant digital transformation programme aimed at delivering world-class, enhanced digital services. This initiative focuses on promoting digital inclusion for residents, partners, and businesses, supported by robust, secure, and interconnected platforms. These platforms will provide essential tools to drive process efficiency and data reuse, offering deeper insights into service performance and enabling a clear understanding of the current state to inform future strategies.
The Enterprise Architect will play a pivotal role in shaping the future of the council’s digital and operational landscape. Tasked with establishing and embedding the practice of enterprise architecture, this individual will serve as the strategic bridge between technology and business ambitions, working collaboratively across all directorates to ensure coherence, efficiency, and innovation.
Key tasks and responsibilities:
* Map the current (As-Is) system landscape across the council to identify existing technologies, integrations, workflows, redundancies, dependencies, and improvement opportunities.
* Develop the target architecture (To-Be) that supports business and IT strategy.
* Create and maintain roadmaps for legacy transformation and decommissioning, including detailed plans and timelines for phasing out legacy systems while ensuring continuity of operations and minimising risks.
* Ensure solutions comply with legislation and cybersecurity standards.
* Establish and maintain architectural principles and standards, formalising and regularly updating guidelines and best practices to ensure alignment between architecture, business needs, and technological changes.
* Conduct technology risk assessments and impact analysis to evaluate risks, analyse potential impacts of architectural decisions, and develop mitigation strategies, particularly for large-scale transformations.
* Lead architecture reviews and quality assurance by setting up and chairing regular review boards to assess solution designs, enforce standards, and ensure quality across projects and programmes.
* Collaborate with data management teams to define data architecture, stewardship, and governance policies, ensuring data quality and compliance across systems.
* Support solution architecture and delivery teams through hands-on guidance and mentorship, bridging enterprise-level strategy and technical implementation.
* Monitor and report on architecture performance metrics by defining, tracking, and reporting on KPIs that measure the effectiveness, agility, and value of the enterprise architecture.
* Improve user experience with modern technology and streamlined legacy systems, increasing efficiency.
* Promote system interoperability across council boundaries to reduce administrative burdens and boost public engagement.
* Foster a one-team culture across technology and council.
* Engage in budgeting and resource planning for architecture initiatives, participating in budgeting cycles, estimating costs, and advocating for appropriate resource allocation.
Key skills and experience:
* Substantial experience in enterprise architecture, solution architecture, or a related field within a large and complex organisation, preferably in the public sector or local government environment
* Evidence of successfully leading architecture initiatives, technology transformation programmes, or large-scale system integrations.
* Proven expertise in designing and implementing architectures for cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, GCP), modern application platforms, integration technologies, and security frameworks.
* Ability to develop and articulate an enterprise-wide architectural vision that aligns with the council’s business objectives, digital strategy, and service delivery priorities.
* Advanced interpersonal and communication skills, capable of building trust and influence with senior leaders, service managers, technical teams, and external partners.
* Deep expertise in enterprise, solution, and technical architectures, with the ability to mentor and develop architectural talent within the council
* Understanding of financial management in public sector IT, including business case development, cost-benefit analysis, procurement, and vendor management.