Global Enterprise Architect

Arcadis is the world's leading company delivering sustainable design, engineering, and consultancy solutions for natural and built assets.

We are more than 36,000 people, in over 70 countries, dedicated to improving quality of life. Everyone has an important role to play. With the power of many curious minds,

Role description:

Arcadis is accelerating its shift to a digital-first company. We're looking for a Global Enterprise Architect to shape our technology landscape, align it tightly to business strategy, and turn ideas into measurable outcomes. You'll lead the Architecture Office, partner with senior business leaders worldwide, and coach a community of architects to deliver a modern, secure, and scalable platform for growth.

Role accountabilities:

Set direction and connect strategy to execution

• Build a clear, business-aligned technology strategy and multi‑year roadmap.
• Translate strategy into pragmatic, time‑phased initiatives with defined outcomes, owners, and metrics.
• Run scenario planning and trend analysis to inform investment decisions (e.g., scale, performance, cost, security).
• Make complex topics simple—use visual storytelling to show future state and the path to get there.

Lead enterprise architecture and standards

• Define "minimal viable architecture" (principles, reference patterns, guardrails) that enable autonomy with clear boundaries.
• Establish decision rights and governance that are fast, lightweight, and value‑focused.
• Maintain a living view of current and target state across business, data, application, and technology domains.
• Identify gaps and risks; recommend options with trade‑offs.
• Have a pragmatic hands-off working method

Orchestrate portfolio and modernization

• Build and maintain an enterprise roadmap across products, platforms, and capabilities.
• Drive portfolio rationalization and modernization (cloud, data, integration, security) with clear value cases.
• Ensure delivery teams leverage shared platforms, tools, and patterns to accelerate speed‑to‑value.

Drive innovation with purpose

• Scan emerging technologies and market shifts; separate signal from noise.
• Run targeted pilots with clear success criteria; scale what works into steady‑state.
• Anchor innovation in business outcomes—new revenue, better client experience, productivity, and sustainability.

Build strong partnerships and a high‑performing community

• Act as a trusted advisor to senior business leaders, product owners, and technology leads.
• Lead a collaborative community of architects; coach architects and product leaders to think and act architecturally.
• Engage external partners and vendors to extend capability and speed, with clear accountability.

Elevate security, compliance, and resilience

• Bake security and privacy into architecture decisions ("secure by design").
• Ensure compliance with relevant regulations and industry standards.
• Improve resilience (recovery, continuity, observability) as the architecture evolves.

What success looks like (first 12–18 months)

• Clear strategy & roadmap: Business‑aligned enterprise technology roadmap with funding priorities and sequencing.
• Guardrails in place: Lean principles, standards, and decision rights adopted across key domains (cloud, integration, data, identity).
• Portfolio outcomes: Tangible reductions in complexity and cost (e.g., rationalized applications/platforms) and faster time‑to‑market.
• Modern platform foundations: Progress on cloud modernization, API/microservices strategy, eventing, and data platform capabilities.
• Measurable improvement: Agreed set of metrics (e.g., reuse rate, release frequency, tech debt, security posture) tracked and improved.
• Strong community: An engaged architecture community with clear roles, working practices, and development paths.

Qualifications & Experience:

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in a related field or equivalent experience.
• Significant experience across at least three domains: business, information/data, solution, or technical architecture; plus solid delivery exposure.
• Proven track record leading large‑scale transformation across regions or business lines.
• Strong communicator who can influence at executive level and explain complex topics in plain language.
• Financial acumen: build value cases, assess options, and guide investment decisions.
• Practical governance: fast, outcome‑oriented decision forums; comfortable making trade‑offs.
• Experience with cloud platforms (Azure, AWS), SaaS, APIs, microservices, event‑driven architectures, integration, data/analytics, and DevSecOps ways of working.
• Understanding of security, privacy, and compliance considerations for global enterprises.

Nice to have

• Familiarity with platforms common in design/engineering and geospatial ecosystems (e.g., Autodesk, Bentley, ESRI) and enterprise platforms (e.g., Oracle).
• Knowledge of EA tools and frameworks (e.g., ArchiMate, TOGAF) and service operations frameworks (e.g., ITIL), applied pragmatically.
• Experience working in both project‑centric / professional services and product‑centric operating models, and with scaled agile environments.
• Background in information management, lifecycle management, and platform operations.

How you work

• Outcome‑focused and pragmatic: You favor simple, scalable solutions and can say "no" with clear rationale.
• Vendor‑ and technology‑neutral: You choose what best serves the business.
• Coach and multiplier: You grow people and communities of practice.
• Calm under pressure: You navigate ambiguity, competing priorities, and organizational complexity with professionalism.
• Inclusive and collaborative: You build shared understanding and bring people with you.

What we offer

• Impact at scale: Help shape a global platform used by thousands of colleagues and clients.
• Room to grow: Access to meaningful work, learning, and mobility across teams and geographies.
• Flexibility: We support different ways of working where role and team allow.
• Purpose: Contribute to sustainable outcomes for our clients, communities, and planet.

Why Arcadis?

We can only achieve our goals when everyone is empowered to be their best. We believe everyone's contribution matters. It's why we are pioneering a skills-based approach, where you can harness your unique experience and expertise to carve your career path and maximize the impact we can make together.

You'll do meaningful work, and no matter what role, you'll be helping to deliver sustainable solutions for a more prosperous planet. Make your mark, on your career, your colleagues, your clients, your life and the world around you.

Together, we can create a lasting legacy.

Join Arcadis. Create a Legacy.

Our Commitment to Equality, Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging

We want you to be able to bring your best self to work every day, which is why we take equality and inclusion seriously and hold ourselves to account for our actions. Our ambition is to be an employer of choice and provide a great place to work for all our people.