The Head of Enterprise Architecture is accountable for defining, governing, and evolving SmartSea’s enterprise architecture direction across business, application, data, integration, platform, cloud, and security domains. The role acts as the senior architecture authority for SmartSea Vision and the shared enterprise capabilities that underpin SmartSea’s digital products. It ensures that business strategy, product strategy, and technology investments are translated into coherent architecture roadmaps, standards, reference architectures, reusable patterns, and decision frameworks. This is a pragmatic leadership role. The Head of Enterprise Architecture must enable delivery, not slow it down. The role provides clear architectural guardrails, supports Product and Engineering teams, resolves cross-domain design trade-offs, and prevents fragmentation across products, platforms, data, and integrations.

To ensure SmartSea Vision is architected as a coherent, composable, secure, scalable, and data-driven maritime platform, enabling SmartSea to modernize legacy capabilities, accelerate product delivery, and build reusable foundations for future growth.

• Owns SmartSea’s enterprise architecture principles, standards, reference architectures, reusable design patterns, technology guardrails, and architecture governance model.
• Leads the Architecture Review Board and owns the Architecture Decision Record process, ensuring that significant technology and design decisions are assessed, documented, communicated, and governed. Architecture governance should be lightweight, adaptive, and aligned with agile delivery.
• Acts as final design authority for enterprise-wide shared platforms, reusable capabilities, canonical data models, integration patterns, and cross-domain architecture decisions.
• Within SmartSea Product teams remain accountable for product value and prioritization. Engineering teams remain accountable for implementation and technical delivery. Programme Management remains accountable for cross-team coordination, dependency management, delivery governance, and progress reporting.
• The role advises product roadmap prioritization, delivery sequencing, build-versus-buy decisions, technology investment options, and legacy modernization choices, but does not replace Product, Engineering, Security, Operations, or Programme Management ownership.

• Establishes and matures SmartSea’s enterprise architecture function, including its charter, operating model, service catalogue, governance approach, and engagement model.
• Defines and maintains enterprise architecture principles, standards, guardrails, reference architectures, and reusable patterns.
• Owns the target architecture for SmartSea Vision and its shared platform capabilities.
• Provides architectural direction for identity and access management, vessel synchronization, legacy integration, data foundations, integration hub, APIs, events, cloud/platform services, observability, security, and operational readiness.
• Defines SmartSea’s enterprise data and integration architecture, including canonical data models, master data principles, interoperability standards, API standards, event standards, metadata, lineage, and data quality and AI foundations.
• Ensures security, privacy, compliance, resilience, and operational readiness are embedded into architecture by design.
• Supports quarterly planning by identifying shared platform enablers, architectural dependencies, sequencing risks, reusable capabilities, and areas where common foundations are required.
• Partners with Product, Engineering, PMO / Programme Management, Data, Security, Operations, and delivery partners to ensure delivery remains aligned to enterprise architecture guardrails.
• Advises senior management on strategic technology trade-offs, including build-versus-buy, low code versus traditional development, cloud-native services, AI-enabled software delivery, integration platforms, vendor products, and legacy modernization.
• Identifies architectural risks, technical debt, duplication, integration complexity, and platform fragmentation, and recommend pragmatic mitigation plans.
• Communicates architecture direction clearly to executive, technical, and non-technical stakeholders.

• 10+ years of experience across enterprise architecture, solution architecture, application architecture, data architecture, integration architecture, cloud architecture, or platform architecture.
• Proven experience defining architecture strategy for complex digital platforms.
• Experience establishing or maturing an enterprise architecture function, architecture practice, or architecture center of excellence.
• Experience with enterprise low-code platforms (e.g. Mendix), including establishing guardrails for scalable use, designing and integrating low-code solutions into enterprise architecture, and balancing rapid delivery with long-term maintainability and governance would be a plus.
• Strong understanding of cloud-native architecture, preferably Microsoft Azure.
• Strong experience with API-led integration, event-driven and distributed architectures, data platforms, and modern application architectures.
• Experience modernizing legacy environments and integrating old and new technology landscapes.
• Experience operating in agile, product-led delivery environments.
• Strong knowledge of architecture governance, design authority models, standards, patterns, and Architecture Decision Records.
• Ability to translate complex technical trade-offs into clear business recommendations for senior stakeholders.
• Strong executive communication, stakeholder management, and influencing skills.
• Ability to balance standardization with delivery autonomy.
• Strong commercial awareness and cost-conscious technology judgment.
• Experience in maritime, logistics, fleet management, ERP, asset-intensive industries, or regulated industries would be highly desirable.

The ideal candidate is a pragmatic enterprise architecture leader who can protect the integrity of the SmartSea Vision platform without creating unnecessary bureaucracy. They should be able to define long-term direction, support near-term delivery, and help SmartSea build reusable foundations that reduce fragmentation, accelerate delivery, and support sustainable growth.

• SmartSea is an Equal Opportunity Employer and values a diverse workforce with many different countries and cultures represented in our business. SmartSea offers:
  • Competitive salary and discretionary bonus
  • Thirteen Salaries
  • Pension Fund
  • Medical Insurance
  • Opportunities for professional growth and development
  • A collaborative and innovative startup culture