ABOUT THE ROLE

Salary: £62,900 to £100,000

Contract type: Permanent

Working pattern: The Partnership has adopted a hybrid working approach, meaning you'll be able to work a mixture between the London head office and home based upon your personal needs whilst balancing the needs of the business.

As a Partner within our Technology & Change operating model, your primary focus is collaborating to drive tangible value for both our customers and our business. The Architecture function acts as our strategic compass—identifying the technical capabilities required for the Partnership to successfully operate, adapt, and transform.

Reporting to the Enterprise Architect PL5  for Shared Capability, you will benefit from a structured handover and be fully empowered to take ownership of the John Lewis Financial Services (JLFS) technology strategy. You will navigate the Partnership's federated matrix and vendor ecosystem as a visible leader within the JLFS Technology Management community.

Key Responsibilities

• Design for Impact & Strategy: Architect, design, and support the implementation of sustainable, highly effective technology solutions. Define architectural intent and technical guardrails (covering vendor, environmental, security, data, and technology considerations) aligned with the broader enterprise strategy.

• Guide Strategic Investments & Roadmapping: Act as a trusted technology advisor to validate investments, ensure a sound ROI, and own the capability maturity roadmaps for the Technology Reference Model. Effectively balance short-term, in-year benefits (like MVPs and test-and-learns) against long-term strategic capabilities.

• Domain-Driven Design & System Modeling: Champion Domain-Driven Design (DDD) principles by continuously refining enterprise domain models. Work closely with Product and business teams to ensure technical boundaries accurately reflect the evolving business landscape, while designing reusable implementation patterns to accelerate delivery pace.

• Technology Governance & Risk: Optimise technology design governance to balance Partnership and relevant Regulatory decisions processes while supporting pace of change and team autonomy. Pragmatically balance technology and information risk while continuously driving a measurable reduction in technical debt.

• Collaborate & Influence Outcomes: Guide technology outcomes within cross-functional teams, working seamlessly alongside internal engineering colleagues, third-party SMEs, Product, and Business Partners to bridge the gap between architectural vision and pragmatic delivery.

• Team Empowerment & Agility: Embrace agile working principles to empower teams to make autonomous decisions at-pace. Actively coach, develop, and support an empowered architecture community, optimizing resource allocation and supporting recruitment workflows when required.

• Market Insight & Innovation: Actively leverage internal and external networks to stay ahead of customer requirements, market conditions, and emerging technological advancements, feeding these insights directly into the enterprise's strategic thinking.

Essential skills/experience you’ll need

• Financial Services Tech Experience: Direct experience or deep familiarity with the financial services technology domain (JLFS), including navigating strict regulatory decision processes and compliance frameworks.

• Active Empathy & Culture Building: Experience fostering a culture of mutual respect and psychological safety when navigating complex integrations, shifting team workflows, or managing external SME relationships.

• Team Coaching & Community Growth: A background in coaching, developing, and supporting engineering or architecture communities, promoting technical best practices, and participating in resource planning or talent recruitment.

• Domain-Driven Design (DDD) & Systems Thinking: Proven ability to translate business strategies into technical capabilities, draw clear domain boundaries, map business domains to system architectures, and design reusable integration patterns.

• Commercial Acumen & FinOps: Strong financial awareness to evaluate Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) against tangible customer value, with a track record of validating the ROI on large technology investments and forecasting vendor demand.

• Agile Roadmapping & Capability Planning: Advanced proficiency in building and maintaining capability maturity roadmaps, demonstrating the ability to expertly balance short-term MVP delivery with long-term, multi-year strategic enterprise goals.

• Influence & Collaborative Leadership: A proven ability to lead through influence rather than just authority, build consensus among diverse stakeholders, empower engineering teams, and collaborate effectively with third-party SMEs.

• Risk, Resiliency & Governance Management: Strong capability to define and enforce technology guardrails (spanning security, data, environments, and vendors) while actively managing technical debt and improving operational resilience.

• Analytical Capability & Adaptability: Exceptional analytical and problem-solving skills, with comfort navigating fast-paced, ambiguous environments and maintaining architectural documentation accuracy .

Desirable skills/experience you may have

• Future-Focused Horizon Scanning: A demonstrated habit of leveraging external professional networks to benchmark emerging technological advancements and successfully applying those trends to line-of-business strategies.

Closing Date:

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ABOUT THE PARTNERSHIP

We’re the largest employee owned business in the UK and home of our cherished brands, John Lewis and Waitrose. We’re not just employees, we’re Partners, driven by our purpose to build a happier world. As we look to our future, there’s never been a more exciting time to join us.  

We’re ruthlessly focused on being brilliant at retail. We continue to innovate, adapt and diversify. Never Knowingly Undersold on price, quality and service in John Lewis and passionately serving food-lovers in Waitrose.   

As Partners we all share the responsibility of ownership and in its rewards. We use our voices to contribute to our success, working together through the good and challenging times, holding true to our behaviours and treating everyone with kindness and respect. 

We all own making the Partnership somewhere we belong. Embracing our differences and creating an environment where we’re free to be ourselves and can THRIVE. Growing ourselves individually, and as a collective. 

As Partners, we make all the difference. And, we all own it.  

Important points to note:  

It’s important to note that some of our roles are subject to pre-employment vetting (which may include DBS checks for successful candidates). If required, you’ll be informed and provided with information about vetting during the recruitment process and we encourage you to complete any vetting documents quickly to avoid delays. Any DBS checks required will be carried out by a third-party registered body and financial probity checks may also be required for some of our roles.

We also recommend that you apply as soon as possible as vacancies can close early if we see a high number of applicants.  

We want all of our Partners to have a good work-life balance and we support flexible working. This might mean flexible or compressed hours, job sharing or shorter hour contracts, where possible. Please discuss this further with the hiring manager during your interview.