Director - IB Enterprise Architect

Job Description

Purpose of the role

To design, develop, and implement solutions to complex business problems, collaborating with stakeholders to understand their needs and requirements, and design and implement solutions that meet those needs and create solutions that balance technology risks against business delivery, driving consistency. 

Accountabilities

• Design and development of solutions as products that can evolve, meeting business requirements that align with modern software engineering practices and automated delivery tooling. This includes identification and implementation of the technologies and platforms.
• Targeted design activities that apply an appropriate workload placement strategy and maximise the benefit of cloud capabilities such as elasticity, serverless, containerisation etc.
• Best practice designs incorporating security principles (such as defence in depth and reduction of blast radius) that meet the Bank’s resiliency expectations.
• Solutions that appropriately balance risks and controls to deliver the agreed business and technology value.
• Adoption of standardised solutions where they fit. If no standard solutions fit, feed into their ongoing evolution where appropriate.
• Fault finding and performance issues support to operational support teams, leveraging available tooling.
• Solution design impact assessment in terms of risk, capacity and cost impact, inc. estimation of project change and ongoing run costs.
• Development of the requisite architecture inputs required to comply with the banks governance processes, including design artefacts required for architecture, privacy, security and records management governance processes.

Director Expectations

• To manage a business function, providing significant input to function wide strategic initiatives. Contribute to and influence policy and procedures for the function and plan, manage and consult on multiple complex and critical strategic projects, which may be business wide..
• They manage the direction of a large team or sub-function, leading other people managers and embedding a performance culture aligned to the values of the business. Or for an individual contributor, they lead organisation wide projects and act as deep technical expert and thought leader, identifying new ways of working and collaborating cross functionally. They will train, guide and coach less experienced specialists and provide information affecting long term profits, organisational risks and strategic decisions..
• Provide expert advice to senior functional management and committees to influence decisions made outside of own function, offering significant input to function wide strategic initiatives.
• Manage, coordinate and enable resourcing, budgeting and policy creation for a significant sub-function.
• Escalates breaches of policies / procedure appropriately.
• Foster and guide compliance, ensure regulations are observed that relevant processes in place to facilitate adherence.
• Focus on the external environment, regulators, or advocacy groups to both monitor and influence on behalf of Barclays, when appropriate.
• Demonstrate extensive knowledge of how the function integrates with the business division / Group to achieve the overall business objectives.
• Maintain broad and comprehensive knowledge of industry theories and practices within own discipline alongside up-to-date relevant sector / functional knowledge, and insight into external market developments / initiatives.
• Use interpretative thinking and advanced analytical skills to solve problems and design solutions in often complex/ sensitive situations.
• Exercise management authority to make significant decisions and certain strategic decisions or recommendations within own area.
• Negotiate with and influence stakeholders at a senior level both internally and externally.
• Act as principal contact point for key clients and counterparts in other functions/ businesses divisions.
• Mandated as a spokesperson for the function and business division.

All Senior Leaders are expected to demonstrate a clear set of leadership behaviours to create an environment for colleagues to thrive and deliver to a consistently excellent standard. The four LEAD behaviours are: L – Listen and be authentic, E – Energise and inspire, A – Align across the enterprise, D – Develop others.

All colleagues will be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Values of Respect, Integrity, Service, Excellence and Stewardship – our moral compass, helping us do what we believe is right. They will also be expected to demonstrate the Barclays Mindset – to Empower, Challenge and Drive – the operating manual for how we behave.

This is a senior, high‑impact architecture role shaping the future of Investment Banking technology. The successful candidate will define the target architecture for a complex, global domain and influence decisions at CIO‑level while working hands‑on with engineering teams to resolve the most challenging architectural problems. The scope includes front‑to‑back capability simplification, data and integration strategy, platform modernisation, and the pragmatic application of AI and advanced analytics within a major financial institution.

This role will appeal to architects who want to:

*   Own the end‑to‑end domain architecture for a large, globally significant Investment Banking business.

*   Set strategic direction and influence CIO‑level decisions on technology investment and simplification.

*   Work directly with senior engineers and product teams to solve complex delivery challenges.

*   Introduce and embed AI, analytics and intelligent automation in a controlled, enterprise‑grade way.

*   Lead architectural maturity, shape standards and uplift capability across the Investment Banking domain.

Key Responsibilities:

*   Own, define and maintain the Investment Banking target architecture, covering capabilities, applications, data, integration and security.

*   Translate business strategy, regulatory change and technology priorities into actionable roadmaps and design principles.

*   Provide leadership to Solution Architects and Product Managers, ensuring alignment to domain direction and enterprise standards.

*   Work directly with engineering teams on complex design and delivery challenges (NFRs, integration, resilience, workload placement).

*   Drive adoption of standard platforms and contribute to their evolution, ensuring solutions are resilient, governable and cost‑effective.

Must‑have Skills:

*   Extensive architecture experience within large‑scale, regulated financial institutions, with strong Investment Banking domain knowledge.

*   Deep understanding of Investment Banking front‑to‑back processes data flows and associated control points.

*   Proven ability to influence and engage CIO‑level and senior business stakeholders with clear architectural judgement.

*   Hands‑on experience delivering architecture, solution design or engineering in complex, distributed environments.

*   Practical experience applying AI, advanced analytics or intelligent automation within enterprise platforms.

Desirable Skills:

*   Experience modernising legacy Investment Banking platforms and simplifying fragmented technology estates.

*   Strong understanding of regulatory and resilience requirements relevant to Investment Banking

*   Familiarity with cloud and hybrid workload strategies across Azure / AWS / GCP

*   Expertise in modern integration patterns—APIs, event‑driven architectures, distributed systems.

*   Experience coaching, developing or uplifting architecture capability across teams.