Operational Resilience Architecture/Enterprise Architect

Job Title: Operational Resilience Architecture/Enterprise Architect - Operational Resilience
Location: London
Working arrangement: Hybrid - 2-3 days per week in the office
Contract duration: 6 months, with potential for extension
Rate: Highly competitive
Status: Inside IR35

The Opportunity

We are seeking an experienced Operational Resilience Architecture Lead/Enterprise Architect to play a key role in a strategic technology resilience and modernisation programme within a highly regulated financial services environment.

This is an opportunity to play a key role in improving and modernising the organisation's existing operational resilience capabilities, ensuring that its technology architecture, processes and frameworks align with regulatory expectations and business requirements.

Working at Director level, you will combine architectural expertise with a strong understanding of operational resilience, helping the organisation assess its current capabilities, identify gaps and define the future-state architecture and resilience framework

The role will also involve engaging with senior stakeholders, communicating technical recommendations at executive level and ensuring architecture decisions support regulatory expectations, particularly those of the PRA and FCA, alongside DORA where relevant.

Essential Experience and Skills

We are particularly interested in candidates with:

• Experience in technology architecture, enterprise architecture or senior technical leadership.
• Strong experience within banking, capital markets or another highly regulated financial services environment.
• Experience regulatory requirements relating to operational resilience, particularly DORA, PRA and/or FCA.
• Proven experience designing, assessing or enhancing operational resilience frameworks and capabilities.
• Experience leading or contributing significantly to operational resilience transformation, technology modernisation or regulatory remediation programmes.
• Understanding of UK operational resilience expectations, including PRA/FCA requirements, Important Business Services, Impact Tolerances, service mapping and scenario testing.
• Experience across one or more architecture domains, including Enterprise, Solution, Application, Infrastructure or Cloud Architecture.
• Ability to assess existing resilience capabilities, identify gaps and define improvement strategies and target architecture roadmaps.
• Strong understanding of high availability, disaster recovery, cyber recovery, fault tolerance, business continuity and technology recoverability.
• Experience working across cloud, infrastructure, applications, data, integration and security teams.
• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills, with the ability to translate complex technical concepts into clear business recommendations.
• Proven ability to lead projects or architecture workstreams and influence senior stakeholders without necessarily having direct people-management responsibility.

Key Responsibilities

• Assess the existing operational and technology resilience framework, identify gaps and recommend improvements or a new target framework where required.
• Define and lead the target architecture and transition roadmap for the organisation's operational resilience modernisation programme.
• Translate business resilience requirements, Important Business Services and Impact Tolerances into practical technology architecture solutions.
• Work across applications, infrastructure, cloud, data, integration, cyber security and third-party services to improve end-to-end resilience.
• Identify technology risks, single points of failure, Legacy dependencies and concentration risks, recommending appropriate mitigation strategies.
• Define architecture principles and design standards covering high availability, disaster recovery, cyber recovery, data integrity, service continuity and recoverability.
• Provide architecture guidance on resilience patterns, automation, cloud platforms, monitoring and modern engineering practices.
• Ensure architecture designs support relevant regulatory expectations, including PRA, FCA and DORA requirements.
• Work closely with technology, security, infrastructure and cloud teams to embed resilience-by-design into technology solutions.
• Communicate architecture strategies, recommendations and risks to senior stakeholders, including C-suite audiences.
• Lead architecture workstreams, coordinate specialist architects and provide constructive challenge through architecture governance and design reviews.
• Support resilience testing, operational readiness, regulatory assurance and remediation activity.

Why Join?

An opportunity to lead a strategic transformation programme and shape the organisation's operational resilience strategy. Work with senior stakeholders and make a real impact on technology resilience within financial services.A specialist cloud or infrastructure background alone will not be sufficient without demonstrable experience in operational resilience.

Pontoon is an employment consultancy. We put expertise, energy, and enthusiasm into improving everyone's chance of being part of the workplace. We respect and appreciate people of all ethnicities, generations, religious beliefs, sexual orientations, gender identities, and more. We do this by showcasing their talents, skills, and unique experience in an inclusive environment that helps them thrive. If you require reasonable adjustments at any stage, please let us know and we will be happy to support you

We use generative AI tools to support our candidate screening process. This helps us ensure fair, consistent, and efficient experience for all applicants. Rest assured, all final decisions are made by our hiring team, and your application will be reviewed with care and attention.