Solution Architect

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Our Purpose

Working in Partnership for a happier world - our shared Purpose that guides us in everything we do and inspires 3 important principles; happier people, happier business, happier world. The John Lewis Partnership is a truly unique business, one that seeks to make a positive difference to the lives of everyone.

At a glance

• Hybrid Working - This is a hybrid working role, therefore your time will primarily be split between working from home (in the UK) and London Head Office.
• There is no fixed rule, but in order to collaborate with the teams and attend important meetings in person, it is anticipated that you will be in the office approximately 2 days per week. There will also be a need to visit other locations occasionally, as required.

• Expected Salary - £57,600 - £92,400
• Contract type - Permanent

What's the role about?

As a key function in the Technology & Transformation operating model, the purpose of Architecture is to identify the technical capabilities and changes that will enable the Partnership to effectively operate, adapt, and transform through technology.

We are looking for a proven Solution Architect with extensive experience of the techniques and approaches needed to understand and facilitate change.

As a Solution Architect, focused initially on our Customer & Marketing capabilities, you will play a critical role on projects or initiatives to shape and modernise the technology capabilities supporting our Marketing subdomain across paid, owned and earned media channels. This subdomain largely operates as a shared capability supporting our main lines of business; John Lewis and Waitrose. This will include modernising the way we understand and predict customers, develop customer experiences, journey and propositions and engage and activate customers.

What will you be doing?

• Design end-to-end technology solutions that are effective, efficient and sustainable making a tangible difference to the business.
• Ensure architectural best practice is brought to bear during solution design to increase value, reduce delivery risk, and control technical debt.
• Make technology choices that will ensure the solution delivers against the expected business and technology outcomes.
• Help ensure JLP delivers on its strategic aims and enables the Partnership to adapt and grow in a competitive and changing market.
• Take a leading and collaborative role in evolving the technology strategy for the marketing subdomain, acting as a trusted advisor to key business and technology stakeholders.
• You will have the opportunity to develop and stretch personally and professionally to achieve your potential.

What you'll have

• Experience and understanding of Customer & Marketing technologies and capabilities.
• Experience of architecting, designing and delivering solutions in a Retail context, or within the business divisions mentioned above.
• Ability to identify and explain where difficult decisions on technology (solutions) may be required.
• Ability to pitch proposals or solution recommendations to both IT and Business teams, adapting your style according to the technical or non-technical nature of the audience.
• Demonstrate a commitment to the principles of co-ownership and collaboration to achieve better outcomes for our business.
• Experience of working with product or agile teams at the same time, effectively governing architectural designs and decisions to enable continuous delivery. You will have the ability to assist product managers prioritise backlogs by articulating technology options and their implications.
• Experience defining, prioritising and establishing new line of business product platforms exposing common business services.
• You'll have played an essential role in the development of an effective Architecture function and in developing your personal and professional skills and capabilities.
• Proven ability to empower and influence others to make decisions, resolve challenges and deliver outcomes that are in line with the strategy. Work across the business to set strategy and outcomes that deliver change at scale.
• Whilst this is not a hands-on technical role, you must have a solid understanding of marketing technologies needed to support omni-channel marketing, retail media marketing, personalisation and marketing performance measurement.
• You'll have experience of the following technologies: Marketing Platforms such as Salesforce, Customer Data Platforms (CDPs), Real Time Interaction Management (RTIM), Next best Action (NBA), Identity Resolution (IR) and Customer Master Data Management (MDM).

What else could you bring?

• You'll advise and consult on the commercial and contractual implications of existing or new obligations. You'll consult on contractual terms of technologies and business services being procured or used within your domain and the impact of change both commercially and contractually.
• Understand the capabilities and processes that support the business and how this differs from our competition and the likely areas of competitive advantage or improvement.
• Understand and advise on how best to support internal and external policies, whilst managing risk levels, costs and complexities.
• Advise on current and future impacts of changing policy or legislation and the impacts or opportunities that this presents JLP.
• You'll have experience influencing business vision to ensure that roadmaps are aligned with the intent of Architecture Guardrails and take accountability for the quality of design work within your domain.
• Stay up to date with trends and shifts in technology, retail and the wider world, and set this understanding against the business or technology context within which you are working.
• You would ideally have familiarity with techniques and tooling including: Domain Driven Design, Team Topologies, Event Storming, Microservices, API-first design, Cloud Native, Continuous Delivery & DevOps, Containerisation and PaaS on GCP or AWS and other data and integration technologies (e.g. Event Streaming, Data Lakes, Pub-Sub and Service Buses).

Benefits:

• Hybrid Working.
• Excellent work life balance, including focus on well being and flexible working and our market leading Equal Parenthood Leave Policy.
• Depending on your Partnership job level, if you work full time you'll get between 22 and 30 days holiday a year, plus bank holiday entitlement.
• The Partnership has a Defined Contribution pension scheme where your contributions, up to an agreed level, will be matched by the Partnership. In addition, after a qualifying period of service you may receive an additional Partnership contribution.
• You'll get Partnership discount in store and online once you complete Probation. That's 25% off in John Lewis & Partners (12% off electrical products) and 20% in Waitrose & Partners. You'll also be able to nominate someone you live with to share your discount.
• Simple cycle to work support scheme.
• We're really proud of our exclusive hotels based in some of Britain's most beautiful areas and once you've been with us for three months, you're welcome to explore them.
• Learn more about our Benefits structure, visit -

Additional Information

• The application form consists of a CV upload, followed by application questions. Please visit - to understand more about application and hiring process.
• Internal applicants please copy paste this link on to the browser for job outline -
• Once you've submitted an application the next steps of the process, if successful, will include up to 3 rounds of virtual interviews, the first two rounds with the Customer & Marketing Architecture lead and the final interview with the Head Architect.
• You'll be asked about any adjustments you might need to support the recruitment process. Let us know, and we'll be sure to discuss it with you.
• We occasionally close vacancies early in the event that we receive a high volume of applications. Therefore we recommend you apply as soon as possible.

Duties and Responsibilities

Interviews potentially commence from w/c 9th December 2024.

At the John Lewis Partnership, we embrace our differences. We want you to be you. Because, well, we know you're at your best when you're free to be yourself. Being a truly inclusive employer to us means creating an environment which celebrates your contribution, regardless of age, gender, race, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, social background, religion or belief. It's why we've set our own aim to become the UK's most inclusive business - for our Partners (employees) and our customers. We firmly believe that our future success lies in diversity of thought from all Partners and it's integral in our mission to build a happier world. We welcome applications from everyone interested in working for us. And, once you're a Partner, your differences will make all the difference. Find out more about D&I in the Partnership here -