Enterprise Architect

Collinson is the global, privately-owned company dedicated to helping the world to travel with ease and confidence. The group offers a unique blend of industry and sector specialists who together provide market-leading airport experiences, loyalty and customer engagement, and insurance solutions for over 400 million consumers.

Collinson is the operator of Priority Pass, the world’s original and leading airport experiences programme. Travellers can access a network of 1,500+ lounges and travel experiences, including dining, retail, sleep and spa, in over 650 airports in 148 countries, helping to elevate the journey into something special.

We have been bringing innovation to the market since inception – from launching the first independent global VIP lounge access Programme, Priority Pass to being the first to sell direct travel insurance in the UK through Columbus Direct and creating the first loyalty agency of its kind in the travel sector with ICLP.

Today we still invest heavily in innovation to ensure that we continue to deliver superior customer experiences.

Purpose of the job

We are seeking a highly skilled and experienced Enterprise Architect to join our Architecture and Assurance team to align our technologies and initiatives with business capabilities and our strategic goals.

The ideal candidate will have a strong background in business and data architecture including data modelling, with a proven history of designing and implementing enterprise-level solutions across business domains. This role requires an analytical thinker who can align technology with business goals and drive innovation within our organization.

You will represent and support the architecture function and its responsibilities within a globally managed, yet geographically dispersed team that designs platforms and solutions for specific market needs while enabling global capability and re-use.

Key Responsibilities

1. Develop and maintain the enterprise architecture framework, ensuring alignment with business strategies and goals.
2. Design scalable and maintainable architectures, including complex data models, integrations, and custom applications that fit the Enterprise Architecture framework.
3. Shape and vision of the products and services roadmap with specific representation of enterprise architecture requirements.
4. Lead the design and implementation of data architecture and data modelling projects.
5. Identify and implement improvements to capability development and application performance, usability, and user experience.
6. Conduct regular architecture reviews to ensure compliance with established standards and guidelines.
7. Stay current with industry trends and emerging technologies to drive continuous improvement and provide market technology expertise/knowledge and actionable insights to business leaders.
8. Develop and maintain documentation for architectural designs, processes, and policies.
9. Produce strategies for technology that meets business needs.
10. Provide guidance and mentorship to engineering and product teams on architectural best practices.
11. Participate in tenders and evaluate which apps/products to use based on cost benefit analysis and research.
12. Be a stakeholder for global tech initiatives, drive collaboration across divisions and provide guidance and direction to junior team members.
13. Be articulate and conversant in the end-to-end technology ecosystem within the organization and offer commercially viable recommendations to business problems using the available toolset.

Knowledge, Skills, and Experience Required

1. Must have recent experience designing and developing Enterprise and Data Architectures.
2. Minimum of 5 years of experience in architecture and development.
3. Architecture certifications (e.g., Application Architect, System Architect).
4. A proven track of leading projects from idea inception through to delivery.
5. Experience working with Architecture frameworks – TOGAF or others.
6. Experience collaborating with global teams in an agile methodology.
7. A proven record of building relationships and creating change.
8. Understanding of the modern technology landscape, how to apply this to business problems and identify the limitations and localisations.
9. Experience onboarding and rolling out new platforms and technologies, as part of transformation initiatives, ideally one or more of the following: Cloud, Mobile App, Microservices.
10. Ability to visualise services and present them to other technical stakeholders.
11. Ability to work in a challenging environment and manage multiple projects simultaneously.
12. Strong analytical and critical thinking skills with the ability to design and implement innovative solutions.
13. Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to convey complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.

Person Specification

1. Enthusiastic about the automation landscape and presenting ideas back to senior stakeholders.
2. An enterprising spirit.
3. Effective communicator across different lines of business functions.
4. Always challenging ambiguity.
5. With strong character and presence - capable of handling and challenging tough and demanding stakeholders in a respectful and productive manner.
6. A creative, innovative person that likes getting stuck in and is keen to learn and grow.
7. Able to build strong relationships across the organisational structure.
8. Nimble, open-minded thinking, flexible on process but committed to impact.
9. Initiative-taker, able to work with minimal supervision and oversight, able to overcome challenges independently.
10. Lifelong learner – always identifying areas of improvement and staying up to date with evolving technology and business landscape.

Collinson is an equal opportunity employer and welcomes differences in all their forms including: colour, race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, neurodivergence, family status, age, individuals with disabilities and people from all backgrounds, cultures and experiences as we strongly believe this contributes to our ongoing success.

We are focused on continually evolving our purpose-driven, high-performing culture, providing an environment where our people have the opportunity to achieve their full potential and do interesting and meaningful work.

In your application, please feel free to note which pronouns you use (For example - she/her/hers, he/him/his, they/them/theirs, etc).

If you need any extra support throughout the interview process, then please email us at ukrecruitment@collinsongroup.com