Enterprise Architect - Waste

Closing Date

2026-09-30

Job Title: Enterprise Architect - Waste

Location: Durrington (Hybrid)

Contract Type: Permanent

Salary: Competitive depending on skills and experience

The Enterprise Architect-Waste proactively and holistically guides business and technology leaders through the formulation and execution of Digital and business strategy. The role ensures business outcomes are supported through coherent, future‑focused enterprise architecture across business, information, applications, technology, and operating models.

The Enterprise Architect builds strong relationships across Product, Platform, Digital, Data, Security, Delivery and Infrastructure, ensuring alignment between strategy and execution. The role identifies and assesses disruptive forces, shapes strategic options, develops future‑state models, guides innovation, and provides governance and architectural direction to support sustainable digital transformation.

A key responsibility is to articulate clear architectural direction and enable cross‑functional teams through roadmaps, standards, guardrails, and coaching. The role acts as a senior advisor, connecting strategy to execution and ensuring architectural integrity, investment clarity, and measurable business value.

Overall, the role focuses on maximising the value from our existing investments in technology, in addition to ensuring we invest in the right technology to meet future business needs

Accountabilities

The role is accountable for leading enterprise architecture development, ensuring alignment between business strategy and technology execution across the following key areas:

Strategic Insight & Future‑State Planning

• Identify and assess disruptive forces, trends and market changes that impact enterprise strategy.
• Analyse business models, operating models, technology ecosystems and industry shifts to inform strategic direction.
• Develop future‑state and current‑state enterprise models using structured, design‑driven approaches.

Strategy to Execution Alignment

• Translate business strategy into actionable architectural roadmaps.
• Construct technology‑enabled business and operating models that provide viable strategic options.
• Provide clear visibility into execution risks, architectural dependencies and transformation implications.

Enterprise Engagement & Advisory

• Build and communicate the EA value proposition, positioning the EA function as an internal strategic consultancy.
• Engage senior business leaders, product owners and IT leaders to provide context‑specific architectural advice.
• Lead cross‑functional discussions on risk, strategy, investment decisions and enterprise‑wide impacts.

Leadership of the Architecture Community

• Lead and mentor architects across domains to ensure alignment, coherence and shared architectural principles.
• Work with governance bodies to guide transformation and resolve cross‑team conflicts.

Business Architecture & Decision Support

• Develop business‑architecture artefacts that support strategy-to-execution alignment.
• Identify business drivers and targeted outcomes, producing diagnostic deliverables for investment decisions.

Enabling Cross‑Enterprise Coherence

• Analyse future‑state and current‑state capabilities to identify gaps and improvement opportunities.
• Define organisational structures, roles and cultural changes needed for effective digital transformation.
• Collaborate with CIO and IT leadership to shape EA operating models and governance mechanisms.

External and Industry insight

• Assess technological, economic, political, and regulatory trends for strategic relevance.
• Identify innovation opportunities and competitive threats driven by emerging technologies.

Roadmapping

• Develop enterprise architecture roadmaps reflecting current-state maturity and future-state needs.
• Lead analysis of the IT landscape to identify deficiencies, optimisation opportunities and modernisation paths.

Architecture Governance & Delivery Enablement

• Define and apply minimal viable architectures, standards, patterns and guardrails.
• Provide “freedom-in-a-box” to product and delivery teams through clear architectural boundaries.
• Collaborate with delivery and infrastructure teams to ensure consistency and iterative architecture evolution.

Knowledge

• Architecture Scale - Extensive experience in enterprise architecture in a mature architecture practise.
• Wider Industry - Experience in working across multiple industries in an architecture role.
• Data Driven – Experience in using IT data and external insight to drive decision making and communicate direction
• Story telling – Ability to simplify complex problems and scenarios through story telling and slidewear.
• Strong knowledge of business models, operating models and technology ecosystems.
• Technology - Deep understanding of cloud, SaaS, APIs, microservices, event‑driven architectures and integration patterns.
• Innovation -Strong awareness of emerging technologies, innovation practices and digital transformation trends.
• Tools -Experience implementing and driving value from Application catalogues and EA tooling.
• Stakeholders - Experience working within complex stakeholder landscapes across business and technology.

Qualifications - Desirable

• TOGAF, BCS or equivalent architecture qualifications.
• Cloud architecture certifications (Azure).

Why join us?

This is an opportunity to join a growing BI Engineering team at a time when Southern Water is investing heavily in its Data & Analytics capabilities.

We offer a flexible hybrid working model, with only two days per week in the office and the choice of working from either our Durrington (Worthing) or Falmer (Brighton) offices.

Both locations offer excellent transport links. Durrington is approximately a 10-minute walk from Goring-by-Sea station, with direct rail services to Brighton and London, whilst Falmer is only a short train journey from central Brighton. Both offices are set within the South Downs, providing an attractive working environment while remaining easily accessible from across Sussex and the South Coast.

You'll join a collaborative team that values trusted data, engineering quality, continuous improvement and helping each other succeed. We believe the best solutions are delivered when people work together, share knowledge and challenge constructively.

Southern Water is at the forefront of transforming Britain’s water industry, investing significantly to enhance resilience, sustainability, and service excellence. With £7.8bn planned investment for 2025-30, this is an unparalleled opportunity to join a business committed to delivering a generational shift in the way water services are managed. 

You will be joining at a time of significant change, working alongside a highly skilled leadership team with a clear vision for the future. We offer an environment where senior professionals can make a meaningful impact, influence major strategic decisions, and drive long-term value creation 

If this role isn’t quite what you’re looking for but are keen to be contacted about opportunities at Southern Water, you can register your details here: Introduce Yourself (myworkdaysite.com- Introduce Yourself) 

Our Commitment to Diversity 

We welcome applicants from all backgrounds, identities, and experiences. We do not discriminate based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, or any other protected characteristic. If you need reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know. 

Additional information: 

In line with Southern Water’s security requirements, successful candidates will be required to provide evidence of their identity, eligibility to work in the UK, criminal record check (DBS) and verification of their employment and/or education history for the past three years.  

Appointment to this role is subject to the successful completion of all pre‑employment checks, including security vetting.  

Please note that if a candidate does not meet the required security standards or fails to pass the vetting process, Southern Water reserves the right to withdraw the offer of employment. Some positions may also require higher levels of security vetting, which may involve providing additional documentation.