Enterprise Architect - Digital Backbone & Digital Experience

Salary: £76,000 - 94,000 per year

Requirements:

• Current, hands-on grounding in at least two of hosting and datacentre, networking, public cloud, platform engineering and digital workplace.
• Proven ownership of a multi-year technology roadmap that secured funding and was subsequently delivered against.
• Experience producing the architecture content behind business cases, with a working understanding of cost, run-cost and affordability as architectural properties.
• Fluency in architecture methods and artefacts such as TOGAF, ArchiMate or equivalent, applied pragmatically.
• Experience working from risk registers, demand pipelines, lifecycle data and growth forecasts, with sound judgement on emerging technologies.
• A track record of design authority or equivalent assurance work that enables pace rather than creating bottlenecks.
• Strong peer-leadership skills, credible with engineers and directors, and able to move between a design review and an investment board in the same day.
• Substantial experience in an architecture function, ideally including time in highly regulated or defence and aerospace industries.
• Desirable experience includes hybrid and multi-cloud estates such as Azure and AWS alongside a substantial on-premises footprint; HPC and scientific computing; NIST CSF and Secure by Design; FinOps and run-cost modelling; large-scale workplace transformation across Microsoft 365, Windows, device lifecycle, identity and access; and certification such as TOGAF, a cloud architect track or CISSP.
• Good judgement, curiosity, a collaborative mindset and a willingness to learn.

Responsibilities:

• Own the target state for both domains, convert it into a funded and sequenced multi-year roadmap, assure delivery against it, and raise the standard of architecture practice across the community that builds it.
• Define and maintain the target architecture across Digital Workplace, Network and Hosting, Cloud and Hybrid, and Platform Engineering, including capability-level views, principles, standards and reference patterns.
• Maintain an accurate baseline of the current estate, working with domain and service owners so landscape models reflect reality.
• Align to Cybersecurity and Monitoring and Observability capability models owned elsewhere in the function, ensuring designs integrate with and are assured against them.
• Contribute domain content to cross-cutting standards and represent the domains at architecture governance forums.
• Bring together the signals that shape the plan, including risk and obsolescence, programme and bid demand, growth and acquisition activity, supplier and market direction, and the security threat picture.
• Translate those signals into a concise, defensible set of domain drivers that underpin the roadmap and investment plan.
• Assess emerging technology on evidence rather than hype, using proportionate proof-of-value activity and clear adopt, trial, watch or avoid recommendations.
• Maintain awareness of relevant vendor, open-source and industry direction, incorporating it into domain standards and roadmaps where it earns its place.
• Own and maintain a rolling three-year domain roadmap with a five-year technology outlook, refreshed on a predictable cycle.
• Sequence change around hardware and operating system lifecycle, licence and contract renewals, datacentre and cloud commitments, and the rate of change the business can absorb.
• Model options and trade-offs such as buy or build, cloud or on-premises, refresh or replace, making cost, risk and capability impact explicit.
• Plan headroom for growth so capacity, licensing and footprint decisions do not become tomorrows constraint.
• Maintain a single published view of obsolescence and technical debt, with the cost of inaction quantified.
• Convert roadmap increments into investment items with indicative cost, benefit, dependency and delivery-confidence ranges.
• Provide the architecture content for business cases, stage gates and portfolio submissions.
• Work with Finance, Portfolio and Service Owners on affordability, phasing and the run-cost consequences of design choices.
• Advise on prioritisation where demand exceeds available funding, and trace approved investment back to the roadmap so plan and architecture do not drift apart.
• Act as a standing member of the design authority for both domains, reviewing and approving high-level designs, patterns and deviations.
• Provide the architecture opinion at portfolio and delivery gates, confirming alignment to target state, secure-by-design principles, supportability and affordability.
• Own the reference patterns, standards and guardrails that architects reuse, keeping them current and making the compliant path the easy path.
• Operate a transparent dispensation process where exceptions are time-bound, owned, costed and logged as debt.
• Act as architectural mentor and technical sounding board to Solution and Technical Architects across the delivery portfolio, providing matrix support rather than line management.
• Pair on hard problems early, including option analysis, non-functional requirements, integration and migration approach.
• Review designs constructively and early enough to change the outcome, rather than acting as a late-stage veto.
• Run a domain architecture community of practice, including pattern reviews, worked examples, lessons learned and a shared design library.
• Build capability deliberately through development plans, certification pathways and stretch work, and hold supplier architects to the same standard.

Technologies:

• AWS
• Architect
• ArchiMate
• Azure
• Cloud
• Hardware
• Support
• Matrix
• Microsoft 365
• Network
• Security
• TOGAF
• Windows
• Office 365
• Backbone
• CTO

More:

We are Leonardo UK, a global leader in Aerospace, Defence and Security, headquartered in Italy, with over 53,000 people worldwide including 8,500 across 9 UK sites. This role is a permanent, full-time, hybrid position based in the UK, with primary location in Luton and additional locations including Basildon, Bristol, Edinburgh, Newcastle and Southampton. We offer a comprehensive company-funded benefits package, including generous leave with up to 12 additional flexi-days, an award-winning pension scheme with up to 15% employer contribution, wellbeing support, access to learning platforms, bonus eligibility for management level and below, flexible benefits up to 500 annually, and flexible hybrid working. We are committed to building an inclusive, accessible and welcoming workplace where diverse perspectives help drive innovation and better outcomes.

last updated 36 week of 2026