Head of Architecture

  • Full-time
  • Contract Type: Permanent
  • Directorate: IAG Tech

Company Description

IAG Tech is a community of IT and digital professionals from across the International Airlines Group (IAG). We drive the technology behind some of the biggest and most successful brands in global aviation, including British Airways, Aer Lingus, and Iberia.

Brought together in 2019, we are a unique community with a shared vision to deliver Technology Excellence and be recognised as industry leaders in the use of technology.

Our mission is to delight customers, enable employees, accelerate business performance, protect our business and increase shareholder value, through the innovative and agile use of technology and data.

We use product-centric delivery teams using agile methods to implement new capabilities at pace and maximise business outcomes. With a relentless focus on improving system performance and stability, we continually strive to find new and better ways to innovate and support the Group.

Our Values

At IAG Tech we share common values to help us create the right culture to underpin our thriving community:
Innovation | we value identifying new ways of using technology to solve business challenges
Empowerment | we value giving people the freedom to operate, that they take accountability, and collaborate with colleagues
Professionalism | we value having and developing the right knowledge and competency to be able to do our jobs to the best of our ability
Transparency | we value honesty and integrity and always share the reality in a manner the business understands
Agility | we value responsiveness, speed and flexibility in everything we do

We celebrate when we see great examples of our values in action and challenge each other when we see these values being ignored.

Job Description

This role will see you lead a team of 20-30 architects (business, solution, enterprise architects) to set the vision and build the technologies to support the enterprise and accelerate development for product teams. You will also set up and promote enterprise imperatives (e.g., cloud, agile, etc.), evolutionary architecture patterns and guardrails (e.g., engineering practices, testing standards, code quality, security, etc.) Lead the development of foundational capabilities such as APIs and microservices (e.g., infrastructure, identity mgmt., etc.) and allow product teams to focus on the features that are differentiating for their business (e.g., experience, analytics, logic, etc.).

Reporting into the Chief Transformation and Digital Officer (CTDO) you will own the architectural decisions and governance for British Airways. You will need to challenge technical constraints and procedures to achieve Agile design. Lead the architecture capability to create a modular and scalable solution that addresses future architectural changes and designs. Through architecture function, drive engineering best practices such as test-driven development, continuous integration, and automated deployments.

We will be looking for you to harmonize the technology and architecture standards and operating model to allow consistent approaches and patterns in the various delivery projects, leveraging the latest Digital and technology patterns (e.g., Cloud, DevSecOps, integration, networks, Agile, CloudOps, FinOps). Deliver thought leadership, roadmaps and business case presentations to Business leaders. Play an active role in the definition of any Portfolio Planning and Demand Forecast activities for the OpCo. Maintain an ongoing partnership with business management to apply in-depth knowledge of the business operations, strategies, priorities and information requirements to establish the technical direction at an enterprise view

Qualifications

To be successful in this role you will have an excellent experience in building large-scale full stack Tech and Digital architectures and platforms with expertise in enterprise technical components of domains/products/journeys. Be a technology leader with passion for leading, mentoring teams with good knowledge of engineering best practices, DevOps, APIs, microservices, etc. Have prior Business Enterprise architecture experience and experience of the other layers of the Enterprise Architecture (e.g., Data, Infrastructure, Applications, Process). Experience in Agile leadership and Agile development practices, with specific Enterprise Architect (or similar).

You will also need to have a fluency in full stack engineering including modern programming languages across stack (e.g., cloud, front-end, back-end, API architecture, etc.) Strong experience and ability to coach on code refactoring, design patterns, design-driven development, continuous deployment, highly scalable applications, app security. Recognised Architecture qualifications (e.g., TOGAF, Zachman). Experience of working within an Agile Product Centric environment using frameworks such as SAFe

As a person you should be energetic, passionate, brave, and rebellious, willing to challenge status quo; yet bringing technology and business strategy to life and obtain Senior Stakeholder buy in. Actively coach and mentor whose goals are to grow and maximize the team’s potential, embracing a culture of trust, free thought, and complete transparency. Your experience should have been gained within a senior level Tech/Digital leadership, working in a complex global organization (e.g., >$10B market cap)

Additional Information

Benefits

The chance to enjoy a challenging career in an exciting, fast-moving environment in a dynamic industry, working in a multi-cultural environment with great offices in many locations. We aim to provide all our people with a work/life balance, as well as the many benefits offered by a global organisation, including health insurance, pension, and performance bonuses.

Diversity and Inclusion

IAG Tech is part of the IAG GBS organisation, and our people are at the heart of everything we do. We recognise that we can only deliver the required business outcomes if we have a thriving community of technology professionals. Together we strive to become the very best at what we do.

We focus on making Tech a great place to work, with a community that we feel proud to belong to. To help make this a reality, our people strategy focuses on six key domains: Engagement, Talent Management, Reward and Recognition, Performance Management, Learning and Development and Culture.

We understand the importance of Diversity and Inclusion in the workplace to deliver this strategy – everyone should feel part of our team. We want to foster an inclusive workplace, celebrate individuality and embrace differences so that everyone in IAG Tech can achieve their goals and ambitions, regardless of their personal circumstances or background.

As a Group, IAG has an ambition that 40% of senior management roles are held by women by 2025. IAG Tech fully supports that ambition, and we are working to help make it a reality. With this in mind, we have set ourselves the challenging target of recruiting 50% female colleagues by 2030.

Privacy Policy