Lead Guidewire Architect

Salary: £49,000 - 89,000 per year

Requirements:

• We require the right to work in the UK; sponsorship may be considered at our discretion.
• We need proven experience leading architecture across multiple large-scale, multi-year transformation programmes, including legacy modernisation, complex migration, coexistence, transitional states, and risk management.
• We need strong insurance and domain expertise, including experience governing major systems integrators and strategic delivery partners.
• We need hands-on Guidewire platform experience, including PolicyCenter, BillingCenter, ClaimCenter, and Product Model, plus a strong understanding of Guidewire Cloud and upgrade strategies.
• We need experience with modern insurance platforms such as Guidewire, Hx, Salesforce, and associated ecosystem technologies.
• We need strong business and domain expertise across the end-to-end insurance value chain, including underwriting, pricing, distribution, policy administration, claims, finance, and regulatory obligations.
• We need alignment to architecture governance, with the ability to work within agreed principles, standards, and controls while enabling delivery pace and pragmatic outcomes.

Responsibilities:

• We will ask you to implement technology strategy, roadmaps, and patterns aligned with global architecture to deliver business strategy.
• You will maximise alignment and leverage reuse of technology to achieve cost efficiencies.
• You will monitor and review technical progress against roadmaps to ensure IT strategy objectives are met.
• You will lead the establishment of strategy, reference architecture, and roadmaps for assigned domains.
• You will conduct technology assurance and governance in line with architecture policy and practices.
• You will facilitate the use of standardised tools and approaches for documenting enterprise architecture.
• You will actively promote and embed architectural ways of working and due governance.
• You will provide direction during technology decision-making activities for executive-level stakeholders, translating complex architectural topics into clear business and investment decisions.
• You will establish and maintain effective relationships within IT, internal business units, and external service suppliers.
• You will balance operational delivery and risk commitments by identifying emerging, underlying, and accumulating risks across processes and controls.
• You will communicate the risk landscape to leaders and help prioritise resources in response, formalising actions where required with the first line risk team.
• You will run day-to-day architecture and design activity, including leading an architecture team, chairing design forums, and resolving complex cross-domain issues.

Technologies:

• Architect
• Cloud
• Support
• Salesforce
• Network

More:

We are QBE, an international insurer with more than 13,000 people across 26 countries, and we are recruiting a Lead Guidewire Architect to join our well-established Architecture team in our London office. This is a permanent, full-time hybrid role, with flexibility to support different working patterns. You will help drive a major five-year transformation of our core insurance platforms across pricing, policy administration, and underwriting, with total change investment in excess of $300m. We offer 30 days of holiday plus the option to buy additional days, flexible working including part-time, job share, and compressed hours, and automatic enrolment into our pension plan with 10% employer contributions. We are proud of our award-winning culture and our ambition to become the most consistent and innovative risk partner.

last updated 34 week of 2026