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