Enterprise Architect - Contract / Freelance

About the job

Description

Equal Experts is an innovative consultancy specialising in the delivery of custom software solutions for blue-chip enterprise and public sector clients across a range of industry sectors. We work on important programmes for our clients, deliver market-leading propositions across the digital, online and mobile channels, and are recognised for our leadership in the application of agile and lean delivery methods to assure delivery. We have offices in Australia, India, South Africa, the UK, the EU and the USA.

We’re looking for contract Enterprise Architects with proven senior-level experience to join the Equal Experts network across Germany and DACH.

Our Enterprise Architects work across business and technology domains to shape the strategic direction of our clients’ technology estates. They are comfortable engaging with C-suite stakeholders, translating business strategy into coherent architecture roadmaps, and guiding multiple delivery teams towards a shared target state.

This role includes defining and evolving the enterprise architecture across business, information, application and technology domains, ensuring it supports the organisation’s strategic objectives. It involves establishing architecture principles, standards and governance that enable teams to deliver autonomously while maintaining coherence at the enterprise level.

This role involves working with organisations that adopt modern agile and lean practices – including continuous delivery, product-aligned operating models and fast feedback loops – to deliver pragmatic, value-driven outcomes at scale, as well as helping leaders and teams adopt more effective ways of working.

Responsibilities

• Shaping and owning the enterprise architecture strategy, vision and roadmap across business, information, application and technology domains.
• Partnering with senior business and technology stakeholders to align architecture decisions with strategic objectives, investment priorities and outcomes.
• Acting as a trusted advisor and architecture subject matter expert for executives, product leaders and delivery teams.
• Defining and championing architecture principles, standards, reference architectures and patterns to drive consistency, reuse and efficiency across the portfolio.
• Establishing lightweight, value-adding architecture governance that enables autonomous teams while managing enterprise-wide risk.
• Producing clear architecture artefacts – capability models, current-state and target-state views, transition roadmaps – that aid decision making.
• Designing technology landscapes that are adaptable, resilient, secure and reactive to change.
• Advising on build, buy, integrate and retire decisions, and on vendor and platform selection.
• Being an agile and lean advocate, coaching solution architects, technical leads and delivery teams.
• Engaging with the detail where necessary to validate that strategy and delivery remain aligned.

Required Skills

• Extensive, diversified experience defining and evolving enterprise architectures in large, complex organisations.
• Exceptional consulting, advisory and stakeholder management skills, including credibility at C-suite and board level.
• Strong experience with cloud, hybrid and multi-cloud architectures and the operating models that support them.
• Proven track record of producing architecture roadmaps, target operating models and capability models that drive measurable business outcomes.
• Strong interpersonal, facilitation and collaboration skills, with the ability to align diverse stakeholders around a shared direction.
• The ability to translate complex technical concepts into clear, compelling narratives for non-technical and executive audiences.
• Working knowledge across areas such as cloud platforms, microservices, event-driven architectures (e.g. Kafka), container platforms (e.g. Kubernetes), security and zero trust, data and analytics platforms, and integration. Breadth is essential; not all are required in depth.
• Familiarity with architecture governance, risk, compliance and regulatory considerations relevant to enterprise and public sector clients.