Job Description
Head of Business Architecture & Analysis
Location - London (hybrid working)
About the role:
We are recruiting a Head of Business Architecture & Analysis to join a central Service Transformation team within a large, complex, mission-driven organisation.
This is a senior, hands-on role focused on business architecture, service design, process improvement and business analysis across professional services. It is not a digital, IT or systems delivery role, technology is an enabler, but the core focus is on how the organisation works end-to-end and how services can be designed and improved around users.
You will play a key role in shaping future-state services, aligning organisational capabilities to strategic goals, and improving service quality and efficiency for staff, students and other stakeholders.
What you'll be doing:
- Act as the lead for Business Architecture and Business Analysis within a wider Service Transformation function
- Work closely with senior leaders to ensure business design and service improvements align to the organisation's enterprise vision and agreed frameworks
- Lead discovery and design for future-state professional services, focusing on capabilities, value streams, processes and user experience
- Run hands-on design and discovery work (workshops, mapping, analysis, service design sprints) to understand current-state issues and define practical improvements
- Develop business-architecture-led roadmaps that balance quick wins with longer-term structural improvements
- Create and maintain core artefacts such as:
Business capability models
Value streams
Service and product taxonomies
Stakeholder and organisational views
- Support portfolio-level decision-making by applying business architecture techniques to identify where investment will deliver the greatest value
- Provide professional leadership to a small team of Business Analysts, setting standards, coaching and developing capability (this is not a large line-management role)
- Work collaboratively with change, service design and architecture colleagues to ensure joined-up delivery across transformation initiatives
What this role is not
To be clear, this role is not:
- An IT delivery role
- A digital transformation or systems implementation role
- A technical architecture or solution design role
What we're looking for:
Essential experience:
- Significant experience in business architecture, business analysis or service design within large, complex organisations
- Proven delivery of organisation-wide service or operating model change
- Strong experience working in federated or matrix environments where influence matters more than authority
- Ability to operate confidently with senior stakeholders and executive sponsors
- Experience balancing strategic thinking with hands-on analysis and design work
Desirable:
- Experience in higher education, public sector or similarly complex service environments
- Familiarity with benchmarking, capability maturity models or service performance frameworks
- Knowledge of Lean, process improvement or service excellence approaches
Skills and approach:
- Pragmatic, structured and analytical thinker
- Comfortable navigating complex organisational dynamics
- Strong facilitator who can bring diverse stakeholders together
- Curious, outward-looking and improvement-focused
- Collaborative leader who develops others while staying close to the work
Why apply?
This is a rare opportunity to:
- Shape how a large organisation designs and delivers its services
- Work at genuine enterprise scale while staying hands-on
- Lead and mature a Business Analysis and Business Architecture capability
- Be part of a collaborative, values-driven transformation function
