Integration Architect

Are you a visionary with deep data and technology skills in cloud and modern data architectures? Do you have a strong business understanding, ideally in the financial services industry? Are you experienced in defining data strategies and leading architectural transformations that support customer-centricity, digital experience and data-driven decision-making whilst fostering agility, scalability, and compliance? If so, we want you to join our team.

As Integration Architect you will be responsible for defining Integration Strategy to enable the modernisation of our legacy estate, designing and governing integration solutions that are strategic in nature, with a focus on API integration, data integration, third-party integration, event-driven frameworks and integration patterns. This role is accountable for gathering requirements and developing integration architectures across projects, product team initiatives and business-as-usual activities, ensuring that integration solutions support business outcomes and align with the organisation's technology direction and strategy.

Key Responsibilities

· Defines integration strategies and solution architectures, ensuring alignment with organisational strategy and business requirements, and managing relationships with relevant stakeholders.

· Lead the assessment and the feasibility of options for technology directions for future integration initiatives across the UK. Works with Business Analysts, Architects, Senior IT and Business Managers to understand business strategy, current integration solutions, and to propose new integration approaches that align with both business and technology strategy

· Ensures that integration designs meet operational requirements and quality standards.

· Provides leadership within IT & Change to ensure integration processes, patterns, and architectures meet best practices and align with organisational standards. Champions the use of integration best practices and standards.

· Ensures integration solutions are aligned across the organisation and that technology dependencies between initiatives are understood. Partners with delivery teams to ensure integration initiatives are delivered to agreed specification, quality, and timeframe.

· Defines integration architectures to guide solution design and implementation.

· Reviews integration architectures and champions their presentation at governance forums, including the European Architecture Board.

· Ensures architectural compliance to integration principles & standards and proposes and obtains variances as required.

· Facilitate best practices for interoperability, integration and data exchange to support frictionless flow of data and process across the enterprise.

· Collaborate closely with architects and other colleagues across Europe and globally to share and drive data architecture best practice and benefits.

Do you have experience in Machine learning?, · Extensive SME knowledge in integration architectures applicable to areas such as data platforms, financial systems, legal systems, HR systems, contact management systems, and policy administration systems.

· Strong experience in developing Integration strategy leveraging fast understanding of organisation context, existing technology, cloud data management, integration and data platform analytics and machine learning, especially with Azure.

· A strategic thinker, able to define and translate business needs in strategy and elaborating roadmap and guardrails to assure quality of products and projects

· Ability to translate data and technical concepts between software engineering, delivery management, and service management.

· Expertise in making and guiding effective decisions, resolving technical disputes, and turning business problems into technical designs.

· Understanding of the whole context, looking beyond immediate technical problems to identify wider implications.

· Capable of producing strategy for integration and data technology that meets business needs and creating, refining, and challenging patterns, standards, policies, roadmaps, and vision statements.

· Knowledge and experience of shifting architecture and integration architecture capability from project to product mindset leveraging agility.

Qualifications

· Educated to degree level or equivalent experience in IT.

· TOGAF or BCS Certification (desirable).

· Strong knowledge of market leading integrations technologies and migration approaches

· Financial services experience