Principal Architect — Governance & Performance

Role Summary

Principal Architect — Governance & Performance at AstraZeneca. You will own the consistent implementation of strategic architecture decisions across business and IT, ensuring alignment with strategy and compliance with standards, blueprints, and roadmaps. You will translate enterprise strategy into architectural direction across Business, Application, Information/Data, and Infrastructure, and drive continuous improvement in Enterprise Architecture performance.

Responsibilities

• Enterprise design leadership: Provide enterprise design thinking and support across one or more focused domains (Business, Data/Information, Application, Infrastructure).
• Governance and standards: Define, refine, and govern architecture strategy, direction, standards, and performance measures for your segment; ensure compliance with standards and global strategies.
• Business alignment: Translate business priorities into enterprise architecture requirements; ensure capabilities align with business objectives.
• Roadmaps and blueprints: Lead development of multi-year architecture roadmaps and blueprints; sign-off authority for solution and segment architectures and enterprise blueprints.
• Process excellence: Implement EA standards, processes, and tooling; establish information architecture design authority for decision-making.
• Performance management: Define and track EA performance metrics, drive lifecycle and standards adherence, and lead continuous improvement.
• Thought leadership: Provide advanced technical and architectural thought leadership; champion EA initiatives and best-practice sharing.
• External engagement: Build networks with external SMEs, analyze market trends, establish partnerships with suppliers, assess enterprise impact.
• Cross-functional influence: Influence senior stakeholders to adopt change and innovative solutions.
• People leadership: Lead and develop teams across locations, fostering cross-cultural collaboration.

Qualifications

• Education: Relevant technical degree or equivalent experience.
• EA leadership: Proven experience defining and aligning architectural roadmaps and strategies across Business, Application, Data/Information, and Infrastructure domains.
• Governance and lifecycle: Hands-on experience setting EA standards, lifecycle management, and governance frameworks, including compliance and performance measurement.
• Formal frameworks and consolidation: Experience with rationalization, consolidation, and integration using a formal EA framework.
• Business case and evaluation: Experience leading large justification phases, including product evaluation and business case formulation.
• Stakeholder influence: Ability to influence senior stakeholders to drive change and adoption of innovative solutions.
• EA capability building: Experience defining and developing components of an Enterprise Architecture practice.
• Supplier management: Experience managing third-party suppliers and establishing strategic partnerships.
• Team leadership: Experience managing and leading teams across locations.
• Communication and translation: Strong communication and relationship-building skills; ability to translate technical concepts into business language.
• Market awareness and business acumen: Awareness of marketplace developments and strong business acumen.
• Collaboration and networking: Strong networking skills; ability to work in diverse, multinational teams and influence outcomes.

Skills

• Enterprise design thinking
• Governance and standards management
• Strategic roadmapping and architecture blueprints
• EA processes, tooling, and design authorities
• Performance measurement and continuous improvement
• Stakeholder management and communication
• Cross-functional leadership

Education

• Relevant technical degree or equivalent experience

Additional Requirements

• None provided beyond qualifications and responsibilities.