Principal Enterprise Architect

Salary: £100,000 - 100,000 per year

Requirements:

• Senior enterprise or chief architect with experience in complex, fast-moving organisations, including building an architecture function or practice from the ground up
• Hands-on approach, with the ability to govern and personally deliver key parts of our platform
• Track record of delivering target-state designs as working platforms across cloud, modern workplace and collaboration, identity and access, integration, and core business systems such as ERP and CRM
• Experience chairing architecture review boards or equivalent design authorities and assuring major designs and investment proposals while enabling delivery
• Strong commercial perspective, including whole-life value, reuse, interoperability, sustainability, sourcing choices, and supplier assurance
• Ability to architect for the whole organisational context, frame complex problems, make high-risk architectural decisions, and connect strategy across organisational boundaries
• Depth in cloud strategy, including provider selection, multi-year cloud economics, and designing to preserve options and avoid lock-in
• Practical experience architecting for data and AI, including responsible and governed business adoption of AI
• Experience setting standards for and assuring work delivered through multiple partners and framework agreements
• Strong communication skills and credibility with executives, boards, and non-technical decision-makers
• Comfort making sound decisions at pace with imperfect information while structures, processes, and ways of working are still being established
• Personal qualities: ownership, confidence in decision-making, constructive challenge, outcome focus, collaboration, inclusivity, adaptability, curiosity, resilience, and resourcefulness
• Desirable: experience in energy, renewables, utilities, infrastructure, or other asset-intensive sectors
• Desirable: experience in government or other high-assurance settings, including Government Digital Service standards and National Cyber Security Centre guidance
• Desirable: experience separating an organisation from shared or outsourced services and establishing an independently owned technology estate
• Desirable: a recognised architecture method or certification, such as TOGAF, or an equivalent demonstrable approach

Responsibilities:

• Review the recorded architecture decision log, confirm or adjust recommendations against the evidence, and take ownership of decisions through delivery
• Land our foundational technology choices across cloud, productivity and collaboration, and staff identity and access, and lead the move away from shared, inherited services
• Establish and chair the Architecture Review Board and Technical Design Authority, providing a proportionate, timely assurance route into investment decisions
• Publish our architecture principles, standards, and target-state reference architecture, and apply them to live procurements and delivery
• Publish an enterprise capability and operating-model view linking business priorities, information, processes, people, and technology to the target-state roadmap
• Recruit our architecture team and build the practice using a mix of permanent hires and partner capacity
• Contribute directly to the build team and execute the vision
• Set architecture requirements and standards for our strategic partner framework and assure major deliveries, including core business systems and the data platform
• Establish data and AI architecture patterns that enable responsible adoption of AI and help turn successful pilots into scalable products
• Oversee the establishment of our digital landscape and demonstrate measurable value as it develops

Technologies:

• AI
• Architect
• Cloud
• CRM
• ERP
• Security
• TOGAF

More:

We are Great British Energy (GBE), working to power the UKs clean energy future. We drive clean energy deployment as a strategic developer, investor, and owner of renewable projects, while seeking to benefit communities and taxpayers through jobs, stronger local economies, and increased public ownership. Our work spans large-scale national renewable investments and local and community energy initiatives. The Principal Enterprise Architect role is based in Aberdeen, reports to our Chief Digital & Information Officer, and is part of the small leadership group establishing our digital function. The postholder will chair our Architecture Review Board and act as our design authority, assuring investment proposals before they reach the CEO-chaired Digital Investment Governance Committee. This is a greenfield opportunity: foundational security standards and core technology work are underway, with decisions and their reasoning recorded for review and ownership. The budget and mandate to build a small architecture team are in place. We offer purpose-driven work, career development in energy technologies and strategic investment, and a collaborative, flexible environment. Our benefits include a competitive base salary, performance-related bonus, excellent pension, life assurance at four times salary, group income protection, 38 days of annual leave, flexible working, professional development and training, and a supportive, inclusive workplace. We welcome applications from all backgrounds and communities and can provide reasonable adjustments during recruitment.

last updated 39 week of 2026