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. Translate enterprise strategy into architectural direction across Business, Application, Information/Data, and Infrastructure. Accountable for health and effectiveness of architecture processes, drive continuous improvement in Enterprise Architecture performance, and educate stakeholders. Global remit and strategic advisor to senior leadership.

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 AZ standards and global strategies.
• Business alignment: Translate business priorities and strategies into enterprise architecture requirements; ensure capabilities continuously align to current business objectives.
• Roadmaps and blueprints: Lead development of multi-year (1–5 year) architecture roadmaps and blueprints; act as sign-off authority for solution and segment architectures and enterprise blueprints.
• Process excellence: Lead implementation of EA standards, processes, and tooling; establish and run information architecture design authority for efficient, effective decision-making.
• Performance management: Define and track EA performance metrics, drive lifecycle and standards adherence, and lead continuous improvement across EA practices.
• Thought leadership: Provide advanced technical and architectural thought leadership across IS; champion EA initiatives and best-practice sharing to mature the architecture capability.
• External engagement: Build networks with external SMEs, analyze market and technology trends, establish partnerships with key suppliers, and assess enterprise impact.
• Cross-functional influence: Contribute to decision-making bodies; influence senior stakeholders in business and IT to adopt change and innovative solutions.
• People leadership: Lead and develop teams (direct and matrix, across locations), typically managing 0–10 people indirectly; foster cross-cultural collaboration.

Required Qualifications

• Education: Relevant technical degree or equivalent experience.
• EA leadership: Proven experience defining and aligning architectural roadmaps and strategies to business strategy 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 across business domains 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 business and IT 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 and negotiating with third-party suppliers and establishing strategic partnerships.
• Team leadership: Experience managing, developing, and leading teams across locations.
• Communication and translation: Strong communication, facilitation, and relationship-building skills at senior levels; ability to translate technical concepts into clear business language.
• Market awareness and business acumen: Awareness of marketplace developments and their relevance to IS; strong business acumen.
• Collaboration and networking: Strong internal/external networking skills; proven ability to work effectively in diverse, multinational teams and influence outcomes.

Preferred Qualifications

• Recognition and certification: External recognition as a leader in EA; master’s degree and/or professional certifications (e.g., TOGAF, SAFe, ArchiMate, AWS/Azure/GCP).
• Industry knowledge: Understanding of pharmaceutical/healthcare industry dynamics and competitor activity related to architecture and information management.
• Regulatory awareness: Awareness of relevant legislation and data protection laws (e.g., HIPAA, GDPR).
• People development: Demonstrated experience in coaching and developing talent.
• Budget management: Experience managing budgets and financial governance for architecture initiatives.
• Initiative and customer orientation: Strong initiative, customer focus, and cross-cultural working.