Group Architect - Customer & Omnichannel

Overview

As Group Architect for Customer & Omnichannel at New Look, you shape the architecture direction for the customer and omnichannel technology landscape. You will translate business and customer needs into strategic roadmaps, standards, and delivery guidance, aligning with enterprise architecture and technology strategy. You’ll lead Solution Architects to deliver robust, scalable, and secure designs across ecommerce, mobile, and stores. Your work directly supports a seamless customer experience and operational excellence in a growing fashion retail environment. This role offers impact at scale with cross-functional collaboration and governance influence.

Pay / Benefits

• 40% staff discount
• private pension scheme
• profit-related bonus scheme
• Healthcare Private Medical Scheme
• life assurance
• extra paid day off on birthday

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop the Solution Architects for the portfolio; set architecture quality and governance standards
• Provide architecture oversight for designs, options, and non-functional requirements; ensure alignment with enterprise standards
• Translate stakeholder needs into practical guidance; engage senior leadership to validate strategies
• Support delivery lifecycle with architecture input, manage risks and dependencies early
• Own architecture governance, design authority, and evidence-based decision making
• Define and maintain reference architectures, standards, and reusable patterns
• Review architecture exceptions with remediation plans
• Contribute to the architecture framework and governance processes
• Assess new technologies for business impact and alignment with strategy
• Lead or support proofs-of-concept to validate architecture options
• Support supplier, SaaS and platform assessments to ensure alignment and security
• Ensure responsible use of AI tools with validation and governance routes
• Stay updated on architecture, retail, and technology trends for continuous improvement

Key requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, information technology, business technology or related field; equivalent experience
• 10–12 years in enterprise, portfolio, product or solution architecture
• Experience in retail, ecommerce or omnichannel environments preferred
• Proven ability to define target architectures, roadmaps, and guardrails across complex portfolios
• Strong understanding of customer-facing and cross-channel architecture (ecommerce, mobile, stores, identity, fulfilment)
• Experience with architecture principles, patterns, views, modelling and systems behaviour
• Ability to translate business strategy into practical architecture requirements and guidance
• Good understanding of API, event, batch and service interaction patterns
• Knowledge of modern cloud, SaaS, commerce, mobile, content, CRM and service platforms
• Knowledge of modelling approaches such as C4, UML, ArchiMate
• Product and delivery methods experience; vendor management and analytical problem-solving skills
• Preferred: TOGAF, BCS, Azure, agile or product certifications

• Strategic thinking
• Stakeholder engagement
• Leadership and people development
• TOGAF
• BCS
• Azure

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