EA - Functional Architect

The EA - Functional Architect designs and maintains the business and functional architecture for assigned business domains, capabilities, programs and initiatives. The role turns strategic objectives and business needs into current-state and target-state models, functional decompositions, application impacts and pragmatic transition roadmaps aligned with Coface's enterprise architecture framework.

The architect works throughout the initiative lifecycle, from early framing and option assessment to architecture governance and delivery follow-up. The role partners with sponsors, product owners, BT business domain managers, regional CIOs, delivery teams and solution architects to ensure that proposed solutions meet immediate functional needs while remaining consistent, reusable, maintainable and sustainable at Group level.

The architect acts under the direction of the Functional Lead Architect. The role prepares architecture recommendations and decision material, challenges solution choices, documents significant decisions and deviations (part of ADAC or ADR cases), and brings material trade-offs or exceptions to the Functional Lead Architect and the architecture committee. The role contributes to the collective architecture practice through shared standards, reference models, repository maintenance and peer reviews. The EA - Functional Architect can handle one or more Business Domains scope and as well as one or more regional scopes.

Interaction with Technical and Data Architects

The EA - Functional Architect defines the business capabilities, functional boundaries, application responsibilities, interactions and target outcomes for the assigned scope. Technical Architects define the technical layer, integration, security, cloud and infrastructure choices. Data Architects align the supporting information concepts, data ownership, quality requirements and ontology or knowledge layer. The three perspectives are reconciled before architecture approval; unresolved trade-offs are escalated through the Functional Lead Architect.

Key responsibilities

• Build and maintain the current-state and target-state business, functional and application architecture for assigned domains, capabilities, programs and initiatives.
• Translate business strategy, operating-model changes and functional requirements into capability maps, functional decompositions, application impacts and transition states.
• Contribute to the medium- and long-term IS roadmap by identifying target capabilities, application evolution, dependencies, sequencing, decommissioning opportunities and architecture risks.
• Partner with business stakeholders, product owners, BT business domain managers and regional CIO teams to clarify needs, frame options and ensure alignment between local delivery and Group target architecture.
• Work continuously with Technical and Data Architects so that functional intent, technical feasibility, security and data design are coherent and traceable.
• Review project and product architectures throughout the lifecycle; assess compliance with target architecture, standards and principles, and provide clear recommendations, conditions or escalation points.
• Prepare architecture committee material and decision records; document significant assumptions, trade-offs, exceptions and remediation actions, and follow them through closure.
• Identify overlap, duplication, functional gaps, obsolete components and shadow IT within the assigned scope; propose rationalization and convergence opportunities that improve agility and reduce complexity and cost.
• Contribute to the definition and adoption of enterprise architecture principles, methods, templates, standards, reference models and reusable functional patterns.
• Maintain complete, accurate and usable architecture content in the enterprise architecture repository (Ardoq), including ownership, relationships, lifecycle, roadmaps and the evidence supporting key decisions.
• Contribute to architecture metrics and reporting, including roadmap progress, standards compliance, application rationalization, technical debt and architecture risks within assigned scope.
• Maintain knowledge of Coface's strategic plans, business processes, regulatory environment and technology landscape, and bring relevant market and technology insights into architecture recommendations.
• Support selected strategic assignments such as IT strategic planning, transformation studies and IT due diligence for M&A cases, subject to appropriate confidentiality and NDA requirements.