Omnichannel Enterprise Architect in Peterborough

Over 175 years ago, our founder Thomas Cook began this company with a vision to ‘broaden the mind of others and break down the partition walls of prejudice.'

Once describing himself as ‘the willing and devoted servant of the travelling public,’ Thomas Cook was a true pioneer of the travel industry, opening up a world of new destinations and new travel experiences to everyone. By obtaining the best services and prices for his customers, he laid the foundations of the company that still bears his name today.

Thomas Cook is now one of the world’s leading leisure travel groups, supported by around 22,000 colleagues and operating from 15 countries.

Our vision today remains true to Thomas Cook’s ambitions - to be the world’s most loved holiday company.

Job purpose:

To ensure that the appropriate technology direction is set with respect to systems for the Group, and that investments are made which best support the business strategy of the organisation and optimize IT cost at an enterprise level.

Key accountabilities and decision ownership :

• Engaging with the business and IT stakeholders to get alignment and consensus on business objectives and priorities, and to develop the business architecture and capability road map delivering business objectives with the best NPV assessment.
• Delivering and agreeing an appropriate IT response encompassing target systems architectures, system roadmap, application standards and investment strategy.
• Providing expertise and recommendations for major transformation area.
• Gaining adherence to the application standards and EA roadmap.
• Driving innovative use of technology.
• Being the recognised enterprise architect providing leadership and consultancy across the IT organisation.
• Govern the compliance of project designs to EA principles and standards.
• Creating systems architectural solutions and conceptual designs for strategic programmes (blue prints).

Skills, know-how and experience :

Must have:

• Engagement : desire to transform the organisation, support Company Growth, Profit and Efficiency.
• Pragmatic, objective and business driven, never afraid to ask the difficult questions.
• Interviewing people and get the best out of each person to build recommendations.
• Vision : ability to build up a strategic vision in any area to support TC leaders.
• Demonstrates an understanding of strategic issues & systems development life-cycle
• Experience in multiple IT areas that include systems integration, IT industry standards, services design, architecture principles design, architecture views.
• Experience of IT Architecture & proficient in the analytical comparison of IT products.
• A proven ability to deliver flexible, reliable, supportable, cost effective IT solutions.
• Experience designing and optimizing IT architectures.

Preferred:

• Knowledge in definition and implementation of Enterprise Architecture models
• An understanding of technologies costs (e.g. level of effort, infrastructure costs, etc) and the ability to model their implications based on recommended architectures.
• Experience in multinational, multi-cultural environment
• Experience of the travel industry
• Business Leadership, managing Ambiguity
• Decision Making, setting Direction
• Commercial Acumen / Delivering expert advice
• Improving people’s capability, managing people

Technical / professional qualifications:

Experience as an Enterprise Architect or similar responsibilities

Travel

Regular visit to colleagues across TC locations (Peterborough, Oberursel, Stockholm) and UK head office (Aldersgate)