Lead Technical Architect

Our ambition is to double online revenue within five years, requiring a scalable, secure, resilient and performant technology ecosystem that supports commerce at scale, rapid innovation, exceptional customer experiences, data driven insight, and operational excellence. 

This role will define and lead the end-to-end technology strategy across digital commerce, data analytics, CRM, loyalty, marketing and workflow platforms, ensuring the architecture enables revenue growth, personalisation, and efficient operations at scale. 

The Lead Architect will work closely with engineering, product, data, operations and commercial leaders to ensure technology investments deliver measurable business outcomes. 

 
Key Responsibilities 

Technology Strategy & Enterprise Architecture 

• Define and own the enterprise architecture strategy for digital commerce, customer platforms and data ecosystems. 

• Develop a target-state architecture and multi-year technology roadmap aligned to the company’s revenue growth ambitions. 

• Ensure the technology landscape supports scalability, resilience and performance at significantly increased traffic and transaction volumes. 

• Establish architectural principles across cloud infrastructure, integration, data platforms, security and composable commerce. 

Digital Commerce & Customer Platforms 

Lead architecture across the full customer and commerce ecosystem, including: 

• Digital storefronts and experience platforms 

• Commerce platforms and checkout systems 

• Order management and fulfilment platforms 

• Product information management and content platforms 

• Payments, fraud and identity services 

• CRM and customer engagement platforms 

• Loyalty and customer value programmes 

• Marketing technology and personalisation tools 

Ensure the architecture enables: 

• Omnichannel retail experiences (click & collect, ship-from-store, endless aisle) 

• Marketplace and partner integrations 

• Rapid experimentation and feature delivery 

• Personalised customer journeys across channels 

Data, Analytics & Customer Insight 

• Define the data architecture supporting digital, commercial and operational decision making. 

• Enable a modern data platform supporting: 

• Real-time and batch data processing 

• Customer data platforms 

• Advanced analytics and experimentation 

• AI-driven personalisation and merchandising 

• Ensure data architecture supports single customer view, segmentation and lifetime value management. 

• Partner with data leaders to embed data-driven decision making across digital, marketing and operations. 

CRM, Loyalty & Customer Engagement 

• Define the architecture supporting customer relationship management and loyalty programmes. 

• Enable capabilities such as: 

• Customer identity and profile management 

• Loyalty and rewards platforms 

• Campaign orchestration and marketing automation 

• Personalised communications and offers 

• Ensure customer data flows seamlessly across commerce, marketing, service and analytics platforms. 

Operational Excellence & Platform Efficiency 

• Drive architecture that supports operational excellence across digital and retail operations. 

• Enable technologies that improve: 

• Order fulfilment and logistics efficiency 

• Inventory visibility across channels 

• Automation of operational workflows 

• Monitoring, observability and operational resilience 

• Promote platform architectures that increase engineering productivity, reliability and cost efficiency, where applicable, powered by AI tooling. 

Engineering & Delivery Alignment 

• Work closely with engineering and product teams to ensure architecture is practical, scalable and aligned with agile delivery. 

• Promote platform engineering, reusable services and automation. 

• Support the adoption of modern architecture patterns, including: 

• API-first architectures 

• Event-driven systems 

• Microservices and composable platforms 

• Cloud-native infrastructure 

Architecture Governance 

• Establish and lead architecture governance and design authority across digital, data and customer platforms. 

• Ensure alignment with enterprise standards for security, privacy, regulatory compliance and resilience. 

• Provide architectural oversight across transformation programmes and major technology investments. 

• Enable  the innovation capability in exploring future-state architecture to support growth pilots 

Stakeholder Leadership 

• Act as a trusted advisor to executive leadership on technology strategy. 

• Partner with leaders across digital, marketing, data, operations, merchandising and supply chain. 

• Translate complex technology decisions into clear business impact and commercial outcomes. 

Skills & Experience 

Essential 

• Extensive experience as an Enterprise Architect or Principal Architect in a large-scale retail, digital or e-commerce environment. 

• Proven experience designing enterprise technology architectures supporting high-volume digital commerce platforms. 

• Strong understanding of modern architecture patterns, including: 

• Cloud-native architectures 

• API-first and microservices 

• Event-driven architectures 

• Composable commerce ecosystems 

• Experience designing architectures across: 

• E-commerce platforms 

• Data and analytics platforms 

• CRM and marketing technologies 

• Loyalty and customer engagement platforms 

• Strong understanding of customer data, personalisation and marketing technologies. 

• Experience integrating digital platforms with ERP, OMS, PIM and supply chain systems. 

Desirable 

• Experience leading major retail digital transformation programmes. 

• Experience with Salesforce Commerce Cloud. 

• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure or GCP). 

• Experience with modern data platforms, CDPs and AI-driven analytics. 

Leadership & Behavioural Attributes 

• Strategic thinker able to translate business growth objectives into technology strategy. 

• Strong systems thinker with the ability to connect complex enterprise landscapes. 

• Excellent communicator capable of influencing executive stakeholders and engineering teams. 

• Pragmatic architect balancing innovation with delivery reality. 

• Passion for customer experience, data-driven decision making and digital retail transformation. 

Success Measures 

Success in this role will be measured by: 

• Delivery of a scalable architecture supporting 2× e-commerce revenue growth 

• Improved customer personalisation and engagement 

• Increased data-driven decision making across digital and marketing 

• More efficient and resilient digital and operational platforms 

• Faster delivery of new digital capabilities and customer experiences 

About Dentsu

Dentsu is an integrated growth and transformation partner to the world’s leading organisations. Founded in 1901 in Tokyo, Japan, and now operating in approximately 120 countries and regions, we bring together the power of a global network of leadership brands to deliver impactful, end-to-end growth solutions.

Through our client promise, Innovating to Impact, we drive growth through integrated services across Media, Customer Experience Management (CXM), and Creative. Our business transformation (BX) mindset, combined with a focus on experience transformation (EX), drives sustainable growth for brands, people, and society.

Our commitment to innovation, collaboration, and diversity enables us to continuously evolve, pushing boundaries while delivering measurable impact in a fast-changing world.

Inclusion and Diversity

At Dentsu, we embrace diversity and inclusion, valuing the unique perspectives and contributions of every individual. We believe that diversity fuels creativity and innovation, benefiting our employees, partners, and communities.

We welcome applications from all individuals, regardless of race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, marital status, or any other protected characteristic. Beyond recruitment, we strive to create an environment where everyone feels respected, supported, and empowered to bring their authentic selves to work.

We recognize the importance of work-life balance and are open to discussing flexible working arrangements for all roles. If you need reasonable adjustments due to a disability or medical condition during our recruitment process, please contact us at [email protected], quoting the reference number of the role that you are applying for. Your needs will be handled with respect and confidentiality to ensure an inclusive and accessible experience.

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