Senior Director, Architecture – Enterprise & Strategy

Role Summary

Senior Director, Architecture – Enterprise & Strategy. Leads the consistent implementation of architecture decisions across business and IT to support the AZ business and IS strategy, ensuring adherence to AZ standards, blueprints, and roadmaps. Partners with business and IT leadership to develop the strategic direction and quality of AstraZeneca’s architecture portfolio.

Responsibilities

• Lead enterprise design in one domain—Business, Data, Application, or Infrastructure—and set the segment’s architecture strategy, direction, and standards.
• Translate business priorities into enterprise architecture requirements; refine strategies and standards as needs evolve.
• Serve as the authority and sign-off for solution and segment architectures, blueprints, and 1–5 year roadmaps.
• Develop and oversee architecture roadmaps and blueprints, ensuring alignment with current priorities, global strategies, and solutions.
• Advise senior IT and business leaders and contribute to cross-functional decision-making forums.
• Champion Enterprise Architecture initiatives across IS; implement EA standards, processes, tools, and the information architecture design authority.
• Define holistic strategies and agreed approaches for managing key information to enable effective decision-making.
• Engage external experts, assess industry and market trends for enterprise impact, and build partnerships with key technology suppliers.
• Provide thought leadership across IS and continuously elevate architecture capability through best-practice sharing.

Qualifications

• Background: Relevant technical degree or equivalent experience; strong business acumen
• Thought leadership: + 5 years experience as leader in an Enterprise Architecture domain.
• Enterprise architecture impact: Proven ability to define multi-year architecture roadmaps and align them to business strategy; experience building components of an Enterprise Architecture practice.
• Integration and simplification: Experience with rationalization, consolidation, and integration across business domains using a formal framework.
• Commercial rigor: Experience leading justification phases, including product evaluations and business case formulation.
• Stakeholder influence: Track record influencing senior business and IT leaders to drive change; strong communication, facilitation, and relationship-building skills; ability to translate technical topics into business language.
• Leadership and delivery: Experience managing, developing, and leading distributed teams; vendor management and negotiation with third-party suppliers.
• External awareness: Strong networking skills; awareness of market developments and their relevance to AZ IS; ability to work effectively in diverse, multinational teams.

Skills

• Enterprise design leadership
• Architecture roadmapping and governance
• Stakeholder engagement and communication
• Information management and analytics
• Vendor management and partnership development
• Industry trend analysis (e.g., MicroServices, API, Big Data)

Education

• Master’s degree and/or professional certification(s) preferred

Additional Requirements

• Risk and compliance awareness: Knowledge of relevant legislation and data protection laws