Location
Reading, Berkshire | United Kingdom
Job description
Business Context
Primark is a leading global fashion retailer, with over 450 stores across 16 countries and employing over 72,000 people.
This is an exciting time for Primark, with ambitious growth plans and a transformation agenda to match:
- Expansion into new markets and continued growth within existing markets
- Delivering more memorable in-store experiences
- Significant enhancements to our online experience including expansion of our Click & Collect trial
- Further delivering on our Primark Cares sustainability strategy
- Providing operational excellence to support and empower our customer-facing teams
Technology is at the heart of this growth and transformation agenda.
Purpose of the Role: Primark Technology is midway through a transformation journey to better support and enable business strategy, modernising our technology architecture and our operating model. As a Principal Architect for Digital, you will have the mandate to drive the future of technology and innovation within the Digital area.
You will work closely with cross-functional teams to drive innovation, promote best practices, and design scalable and sustainable technology solutions within Digital. Your expertise will contribute to the successful implementation of technology initiatives across Primark.
Duties & Responsibilities: - Enhance and evolve the technology strategy for Digital channels, and drive the technology roadmap based on the overall strategy, including technology estate rationalisation and decommissioning plans
- Work closely with key business stakeholders, product management teams in the domain and the wider architecture community to design architecture blueprints, evolutionary designs and assurance for Digital
- Develop target and evolutionary architecture per standards and guardrails
- Have overall responsibility for designing solutions that may involve a combination of in-house enterprise-grade solutions and COTS products
- Within guardrails, be responsible for identifying, assessing, and selecting the most appropriate technologies, architectural styles and patterns needed to deliver a software solution
- Lead domain and solutions architects in the Digital area within a matrix structure
- Support Product Managers and Product Owners to understand, communicate and manage technical dependencies, risks and activities across Products and Product Domains
- Work closely with the relevant engineering leads to ensure that solution designs can be translated into working high-quality software and that any technology selections or architectural styles are clearly articulated to the teams
- Encourage and enable agile ways of working via automated and consumable platforms; further to this, build and maintain a close working relationship with Engineering
- Ensure the design is performed with a complete understanding of a product’s market and technical objectives while bridging the gap between the technical and non-technical by turning business problems into technical design
- Provide thought leadership in Technology strategy, development models, cost-optimisation, innovation and efficiency improvement; drive our MACH (Microservices, API, Cloud-first, Headless) approach
- Develop a long-term vision of technologies and solutions within Digital. Collaborate with Tech leadership in planning and implementation of technology roadmaps. Assist the team in researching solutions, soliciting input from outside industry experts and recommending solutions to meet business requirements.
Collaborate - Build effective communication channels with business leaders and stakeholders
- Collaborate with stakeholders, including senior leaders and technology teams, to define, maintain and enforce architecture principles, standards, and guidelines.
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams to evaluate and select technology solutions that align with Primark's business needs and architectural principles.
- Develop and maintain relationships with technology vendors and partners, evaluating their capabilities and ensuring effective collaboration.
Leadership - Provide strategic guidance and mentorship to architects and wider teams
- Share an engaging and inspiring vision with the team and provide clarity and a sense of direction to enable working towards common goals. Generate enthusiasm and commitment within the team and across Primark to shared outcomes.
- Operate as a role model within Primark, inspiring and mentoring others to develop and progress
Skills & Experience: - 7+ years’ experience within architecture roles, with 5+ in lead/domain positions, preferably in an agile, at-scale environment (domain/industry expertise).
- Experience of mission-critical High Availability design and deployment in large transaction volume environments
- Deep understanding of domain-driven design, event-driven architecture, integration and other relevant modern design practices
- Previous experience of working within a composable architecture framework (preferred), with exposure and experience of the MACH framework (preferred)
- An appropriate degree, equivalent qualification, or experience (preferred)
- Strong knowledge of technology architecture principles, frameworks, and best practices.
- Excellent leadership and communication skills, with the ability to influence and collaborate effectively with stakeholders at all levels.
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to evaluate complex technology challenges and develop innovative solutions.
- Solid understanding of current and emerging technologies, including AI, cloud computing, microservices, and data analytics.
- A plus is membership or affiliation with relevant professional organisations (e.g., TOGAF).
Personal Attributes - Thrives in a fast-paced environment with the ability to deliver best-in-class solutions in the face of changing business requirements and unforeseen circumstances.
- An affinity for the mission and vision of the Technology function and a passion to play a key role in shaping and achieving the success of the function.
- Creative and analytically minded
- An entrepreneurial thinker who seeks new opportunities and ways to create balanced business growth while improving operational capabilities.
- Promotes customer-centricity and ensures focus on creating great customer experiences.
- Excellent planning and organisation skills, ability to multi-task, plan and prioritise work schedule for self and team and work within agreed timescales.
- Excellent attention to detail and an ability to analyse and interrogate high volumes of data and demonstrate an ability to focus on higher level overview.
- Effective and persuasive presentation skills, including the ability to present complex information understandably to all areas of the business.
Why work with us?
At Primark, we know how hard everyone works to achieve our business goals. Having a competitive salary and annual bonus scheme is our way of acknowledging this. We will also provide you with a progressive career path because clear advancement is what we are all about at Primark.
Our flexible working benefit, Your Day Your Way, means you get to choose when to start and finish your workday. Choose to work remotely if you like, in a way that suits you but also helps us get the most out of your talents. There is a lively culture here, and it’s easy to get to know each other in a truly warm atmosphere.
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