Business Unit / Team: Chief Operating Office
Salary range: £68,000-£95,000 per annum DOE + red-hot benefits

Get out of your comfort zone. Live a life more Virgin.

Our Team
Enterprise Architecture function is ‘horizontal’ across the bank, it cuts across all business franchises and has an overall objective to transform and set the technology direction for the bank.

Enterprise Architecture:
• Provide technology Thought Leadership to the enterprise by setting clear direction through the Technology Strategy, Enterprise and Domain Principles, and Reference Architectures.
• Enable Agility by right-sizing governance with a focus on scalable, secure, resilient design which is aligned to the Strategic principles and patterns.
• Drive innovation, simplification, and growth to support VM’s Digital and Cloud ambitions by enabling key building blocks and supporting simplification of the Technology estate, cost optimisation, and enhancing data use, with a focus on delivery of exceptional Customer and Colleague experience.
• Empower colleagues to make architectural decisions through coherent, reusable reference materials, early engagement and ongoing collaboration.

What you’ll be doing
• Shaping our roadmap for CRM, workflow and automation
• Creating reference architectures and architecture contracts to build a vision of our future and to align specific projects/ tribes to execute this vision
• Investigating and developing high quality IT architecture options illustrating their relative merits and advantages
• Advising projects/ tribes on architecture design, ensuring changes have a clear target architecture, design principles/ guardrails and regular design checkpoints to ensure adherence to the IT strategy
• Interacting with, and influencing, project and programme stakeholders across IT to ensure changes are governed appropriately and follow the agreed processes
• Reviewing of relevant engineering artefacts to ensure that they take account of relevant technical strategies, policies, standards and practices
• Providing advice and guidance on technology strategy, architectural accelerators, market opportunities, governance, and continuous improvements to drive better, more informed decision making
• Supporting the development of transformational plans that articulate the sequence and timing of activities required to deliver on the strategic priorities of the business
• Maintain continuous professional development ensuring technical and industry knowledge remains current
• Represent Virgin Money externally with partners and suppliers, across the industry, maintaining a network of contacts

We need you to have
• Knowledge and experience of CRM and workflow technologies like Microsoft Dynamics,
• Proven experience within a senior architecture role of producing key architectural products (reference architectures, principles, and patterns)
• Experience of shaping and creating investment options to achieve a strategic vision
• Experience of leading technical direction for change initiatives setting a clear vision and guidelines to empower engineering colleagues to create brilliant solutions
• Experience in financial services industry
• Experience with IT and Business architecture best practices and goals
• Communication and influencing skills at all levels with the ability to explain complex concepts to non-experts
• Experience of creating an architecture vision to transform organisations to exploit a cloud-based architecture – SaaS / PaaS applications (Azure preferred)

It’s a bonus if you have but not essential
• Knowledge of Microsoft Dynamics, Power Platform (PowerBI, Power Automate, Power Virtual Agents, Power Apps etc.),
• Knowledge of Microsoft Azure including native services, Azure Serverless technologies like Azure Functions, LogicApps, Microservices
• Experience of working in Agile Tribes/Squads

Red Hot Rewards
• Generous holidays - 38.5 days annual leave (including bank holidays and prorated if part-time) plus the option to buy more
• Up to five extra paid well-being days per year
• 20 weeks paid, gender-neutral family leave (52 weeks in total) for expectant parents and those looking to adopt
• Market-leading pension
• Free private medical cover, income protection and life assurance
• Flexible benefits include Cycle to Work, wellness and health assessments, and critical illness
• Ability to work anywhere in the UK (where the role allows)

And there's no waiting around, you'll enjoy these benefits from day one.

Feeling insatiably curious about this role? Apply as soon as you can. If we’re lucky to receive a lot of interest, we may close the advert early and would hate you to miss out.

We're all about helping you Live a Life More Virgin, so happy to talk flexible working with you.

Say hello to Virgin Money
We’re making great strides towards achieving our ambition of becoming the UK’s best digital bank. As a full-service digital bank with a heritage stretching back over 180 years, we`re a workforce to be reckoned with. We're putting the full power of our experience behind disruptive ideas that reinvent the role a bank plays in people's lives. We strive to create positive experiences for our millions of customers and our purpose, ‘Making You Happier About Money’, underpins everything we do. We believe in doing banking differently, innovating and working together to make a real difference. Join us and Live a Life More Virgin that empowers you with choice and flexibility in how you work.

Be yourself at Virgin Money
Our purpose is to make people happier about money, this means seeing and feeling the world as our customers do by creating a workforce that reflects the rich diversity of our customers and communities. We’re committed to creating an inclusive culture where colleagues feel safe and inspired to contribute, speak up and be heard.

As a Disability Confident Leader, we're committed to removing any obstacles to inclusion. If you need any reasonable adjustments or support making your application, contact our Talent Acquisition team careers@virginmoney.com

Now the legal bit
Living A Life More Virgin allows our colleagues to be based anywhere in the UK (if the role allows it), but we'll need you to confirm you have the right to work in the UK.

If you're successful in securing a role with us, there are some checks you need to complete before starting. These include credit and criminal record checks and three years' worth of satisfactory references. If the role is part of the Senior Manager Regime and Certification Regime, it requires enhanced pre-employment checks – we'll ask for six years of regulatory references, and once in the role, you'll be subject to periodic employment checks.