Chief Architect

Most chief architect roles in New Zealand come with a practice attached, a team of architects, a set of governance forums, and a lot of documentation that exists mainly to keep the practice busy. This one is built the other way around. Collada has been engaged to find a Chief Architect who sets the direction and then takes it straight to the engineers doing the building, across autonomous value streams and a technology platform team.

The appeal is how quickly your work lands. You will hold the architectural town plan, set enterprise direction that gives teams coherence, and confirm cross cutting decisions through the architecture decision record process alongside the principal engineers. Decisions get made in days rather than sitting in a queue of review boards, and because the direction is agreed rather than mandated, teams build to it because they believe in it. You will be producing most of the thinking yourself, which is the point, this is a role for an architect who would rather write the strategy than review someone else's.

The leverage is unusual. There is no layer between you and engineering leadership, you work directly with the principal engineers, the heads of technology and the platform leads. With that group behind you, you can cut out an enormous amount of the traditional architecture practice work that so many organisations get stuck on, and spend your time on the decisions that genuinely shape the estate, the technology radar, and where the investment goes over the next few years.

The background they want is a product one. You will have worked somewhere engineering owned delivery and architecture earned its place, because that is the practice they are building towards. Unfortunately, if you have not worked in a product organisation, we are unlikely to be able to engage with you on this occasion, no matter how strong the rest of your background is. It is the part the client cannot compromise on and I would rather say it here than after you have sent a CV.

Enterprise experience matters just as much. This is a substantial estate with real history in it, and that is where the interesting architecture sits. If you have seen modern product and engineering practice working properly and have also spent time inside a large enterprise, you will know which parts of an estate can move quickly and which ones need a plan, and that combination is exactly what they are looking for.

You do not need to have been there and done it. If you are operating at that enterprise layer already and have proven experience helping set the strategy, this is well worth a conversation. They would rather find the right person than someone who has simply held the same title somewhere else.

If what you want is a practice to build and a team of architects to run, this is not that role. The reward here is influence and the speed you can use it at.

Role: Chief Architect

Location: Auckland, hybrid

Skills: Enterprise Architecture, Technology Strategy, Modern Architecture Practice across the application, integration and platform layers

What you will be doing

• Setting and communicating enterprise architecture direction, so that teams across the estate make decisions that pull in the same direction without needing central control
• Growing and evolving the architectural town plan, keeping it grounded in a deep understanding of the business strategy
• Guiding principal and lead engineers through architectural design questions and pattern choices, while they are building
• Confirming architectural direction on cross cutting decisions through the architecture decision record process
• Working alongside the practice principal engineers so that architectural direction and engineering practice stay complementary
• Building alignment across the heads of technology and the technology platform leads on shared architectural approaches
• Scanning the horizon for emerging technology, working out what is relevant to the strategy, and maintaining the technology radar

What they are looking for

• You have come from a product organisation, somewhere engineering owned delivery and architecture earned its place
• You have enterprise experience as well, so you know what it takes to move a large estate and enjoy that kind of problem
• You have 10+ years in architecture, a good portion of it at enterprise or principal level setting direction across a whole technology estate
• You are operating at the enterprise layer now, either setting architecture direction, standards and a town plan across a complex organisation, or playing a real part in helping set the strategy
• You bring people with you rather than relying on authority, because that is how direction gets set here
• Very likely an engineering background, which is what gives you credibility with the principal engineers from the first week
• You can communicate direction clearly, verbally and visually, to engineers and to an executive audience, and you can write, because a lot of the output here is a document someone makes a decision on