Enterprise Architect - Corporate Technology

As an Enterprise Architect with deep expertise in Finance and Corporate Technologies, you will bridge the gap between enterprise technology and key business objectives across corporate functions. You will design and govern architectures that enable enterprise-wide transformation, ensuring alignment with CFO, CHRO, CPO, and General Counsel priorities. Your domain knowledge will drive the evolution of systems for core Finance, HR, Legal, and Procurement platforms, while optimising costs, mitigating risk, and enabling data-driven decision-making.

The Enterprise Architect proactively and holistically helps and guides enterprise leaders, product managers, product owners, and distributed product delivery teams through transformation and optimisation initiatives. You will support the formulation of business strategy, outcomes, and capabilities - helping the organisation to achieve targeted business outcomes related to growing revenue, optimising costs, and mitigating risks.

Responsibilities

Finance & Corporate Technologies-Focused Enterprise Architecture

• Functional Systems Strategy: Define strategy and target architectures for core capabilities within Finance (GL, AP/AR, Consolidation, Tax, Treasury), HR (HCM, Payroll, Talent Management), Legal (eBilling, Matter Management, Contract Lifecycle Management), and Procurement (Sourcing, P2P, Supplier Management). Address emerging needs such as AI-driven forecasting and process automation.
• ERP & SaaS Platform Leadership: Lead the modernisation of core platforms (e.g. Workday, SAP, Coupa, ServiceNow) and niche systems. Analyse trends and disruptions (e.g. AI in HR, CLM) and assess their impact on targeted business outcomes balancing long-term architectural integrity with pragmatic delivery trade-offs
• Regulatory & Compliance Alignment: Architect solutions for mandates including SOX, GDPR, data privacy, and other corporate governance requirements, ensuring auditability and control across all domains.
• Executive Advisory: Partner with functional leadership (CFO, CHRO, CPO, Legal) to translate strategies for capital allocation, talent management, risk mitigation, and cost optimisation into integrated technical roadmaps. Visualise future states to trigger long-term planning and communicate the value of enterprise architecture.
• Vendor/Partner Evaluation: Assess FinTech, HRTech, LegalTech, and ProcureTech solutions for fit within the broader enterprise ecosystem and assist in managing vendor relationships.

Cross-Domain Integration

• Design seamless data flows and integrations between finance systems and HR (payroll, benefits), Procurement (AP, spend analytics), Legal (accruals, compliance), and Commercial domains.
• Govern APIs, middleware, and data models for real-time, secure data sharing across the corporate technology landscape, enabling a single source of truth progressively strengthening data consistency and integration maturity over time.

Governance & Standards

• Enforce architecture principles across all domains (e.g. single source of truth, privacy-by-design, closed-loop reconciliation), applying minimal viable architecture where appropriate to enable momentum
• Champion FinOps and TechOps practices to align cloud and SaaS spend with financial accountability and value realisation.

·Significant experience in enterprise architecture, technology strategy, or transformation roles, with demonstrated architectural judgement and experience shaping target states and roadmaps in evolving environments

·Experience on finance systems (ERP, EPM, Treasury, etc.) and experience with HR Tech (e.g. Workday, SAP SuccessFactors), Legal Tech (e.g. Onit, Mitratech), and/or Procurement Tech (e.g. Coupa, Ariba).

Proven track record designing architectures for:

·Financial close automation & regulatory reporting.

·Integrated Hire-to-Retire and Procure-to-Pay process flows.

·Enterprise Contract Lifecycle Management.

·Treasury, Risk & Compliance management.

·Deep understanding of finance, HR, and procurement operating models (centralised vs. decentralised) and their tech implications

·Fluency in finance KPIs (EBITDA, NPV, DSO)and operational KPIs (e.g. cost-per-hire, requisition-to-order cycle time)and the ability to architect systems that improve them.

·Knowledge of business ecosystems, SaaS, IaaS, PaaS, SOA, APIs, open data, microservices, event-driven IT, data and predictive analytics.

·Understanding of business models, operating models, financial models, cost-benefit analysis, budgeting and risk management.

·Familiarity with specific platforms in the HR, Legal, and Procurement domains.

·Familiarity with enterprise architecture tools, related graphical models, and frameworks.

·Insight into information management practices, system development life cycle management, IT services management, agile and lean methodologies, infrastructure and operations, and EA and ITIL frameworks.

·Understanding of various operating models such as project-centric and product-centric and also different types of agile principles, methodologies and frameworks, especially those designed to be scaled at the enterprise level.

·Awareness of existing, new and emerging technologies, and processing environments.

·Effective leadership skills with exceptional soft and interpersonal skills, including teamwork, facilitation and negotiation.

·Strong consulting skills such as targeted communications, engagement management, stakeholder management and business development.

This is a 6 month contract offering circa £850 per day inside of IR35. 3 / 4 days a week in the central London HQ are required.

One of the worlds great FMCG's (FTSE 100) requires an Enterprise Architect in its Corporate Tech function. This role is anchored in Enterprise Architecture and is focused on building and maturing EA capability in an evolving Corporate Functions environment. It combines strong architectural judgement with the ability to partner, influence, and drive pragmatic, outcome-led change in a landscape with emerging maturity and legacy complexity.