Chief Architect

From our first store in the 1960s, a little Taunton shop with great clothes and even better prices, to an omni-channel business serving millions of customers… we're New Look.
 

Our purpose is always to inspire That New Look Feeling and we believe that starts with us. Our values motivate us every day: we play to win, we’re customer-obsessed and we work as one.

About the role:

As a Chief Architect at New Look you will be providing technical leadership and strategic vision to the Architecture Team and wider organisation while networking across the organisation to maintain understanding of the enterprise context as a as the enterprise Design Authority.

You will represent and promote New Look’s Architecture and Technology functions internally and externally, act as a role model and build technical architecture capability, ensuring quality and innovative technical solutions are identified.

As a senior technical Design Authority, you will chair meetings, arbitrating design decisions in the business context and acting as the senior escalation point for technology concerns.

You will be evaluating, raising, and communicating technical risk across the organisation, and helping shape the technology programme to mitigate technical risks while mentoring and coaching the architecture community to ensure culture fit, within New Look.

Responsibilities:

• Accountable for the quality of technical output from the Architecture team, ensuring that designs are aligned with technology strategies, design principles and can be implemented in the commercial and business context.
• Defining and implementing standards and processes to assure design quality, including principles and measures.
• Ensuring that appropriate technologies supporting the enterprise design principles and roadmaps are evaluated, aligned to business goals and market innovation, and formed into actionable Technology strategies.
• Ensuring the Architecture Design Principles are aligned with the needs of the enterprise and that they are applied uniformly to all technical output.
• Ensure documentation of the enterprise’s system and integration landscape is current.
• Responsible for ensuring that all application roadmaps are current, aligned with the needs of the enterprise and the Design Principles, and define a clear architectural vision
• Ensure documentation of the design processes, principles, roadmaps and technology strategies are current, accurate and available.
• Ensure the design principles, processes and roadmaps facilitate effective delivery and are adopted by delivery teams.
• Support Senior members of the Architecture team in developing and managing a resource plan, ensuring technology architecture needs are met across the organisation.
• Provide architectural and technical leadership on large, complex cross-domain change programmes as needed by the organisation.

About you:

• Experience working to ITIL and in Agile environments, continual delivery techniques and DevOps cultures, as well as enterprise-scale change programmes.
• A degree in IT or related business topic (desirable)
• Experience of leading an Architecture community.
• Experience of leading on retail technology strategies, policies and technology guidelines.
• Demonstrable experience in IT industry standards, services, design, architecture principles design, architecture viewpoint design, building block design, solutions modelling and systems behaviour.
• Substantial experience in design and delivery using SaaS and public cloud components.
• Enterprise Architecture experience (e.g. TOGAF or similar)

Why New Look?

The amazing people, the fashion – there are so many reasons to love working at New Look. We prioritise development, offering training to support your progression, so you can be your absolute best and achieve your goals. 

You’ll also receive these amazing benefits, to name only a few:

• 40% staff discount
• Monthly 25% off privilege vouchers for family and friends to enjoy
• Season ticket loans

Apply now to find out more!

We pride ourselves on being a flexible employer, our colleagues work a range of patterns. If you have a specific pattern in mind, we're keen to discuss this with you in line with the output needed for the role.   
   
Please ensure that your CV is in simple format e.g. Microsoft Word when applying using your CV to ensure smooth application process.