Permanent | Hybrid Working | South East England

We are partnering with a leading customer-focused organisation operating in a complex, regulated environment to recruit a Technical Architect for a critical retail technology domain.

This role provides domain-level technical leadership across a key part of the customer and commercial ecosystem. You will define, shape and govern the architecture supporting retail operations delivered in an operational, distributed environment.

This is a high-impact opportunity to drive architectural direction across point-of-sale systems, retail platforms, catalogue and pricing services, payment integrations, supply chain connectivity, and post-transaction reconciliation processes. You will work closely with delivery teams, third-party suppliers and business stakeholders to simplify complexity and enable sustainable technical change.

Key Responsibilities

• Own and evolve the target-state architecture for the retail technology domain
• Define and govern architectural standards, patterns and principles
• Shape the transition of legacy systems toward modular, event-driven, cloud-aligned designs
• Develop and maintain domain roadmaps aligned with enterprise strategy
• Manage technical risk and technical debt registers
• Ensure alignment with security, performance, resilience and operational readiness standards
• Lead architecture reviews and support governance processes
• Translate business requirements into clear, pragmatic technical designs
• Guide delivery teams and suppliers to ensure architectural intent is realised
• Produce high-quality architectural artefacts using standard modelling approaches (e.g. UML, BPMN, C4, ArchiMate)
• Design robust, scalable and operable integration patterns
• Support systems operating in intermittently connected or distributed environments (including edge/mobile devices)
• Oversee data flows across retail, operational and financial systems
• Ensure solutions operate safely and reliably within a live operational environment
• Mentor engineers and promote best practice in architecture
• Support proof-of-concept initiatives for new retail capabilities and digital tooling
• Improve documentation standards, reusable patterns and architectural processes

Experience & Skills Required

• Proven experience as a Technical Architect or Senior Engineer
• Background in retail, ecommerce, payments, logistics or transport-related environments
• Strong knowledge of integration patterns, event-driven architecture, cloud platforms, and domain-driven design
• Experience modernising and evolving legacy platforms
• Understanding of distributed systems and offline-capable solutions
• Familiarity with financial processing and reconciliation workflows
• Strong stakeholder engagement and communication skills
• Experience working with mobile or edge devices