Title:  Portfolio Architect

9 Month Fixed Term Contract

Canada Life UK looks after the retirement, investment and protection needs of individuals, families and companies. We help to build better futures for our customers, our intermediaries and our employees by operating as a modern, agile and welcoming organisation.

Part of our parent company Great-West Lifeco, Canada Life UK has operated in the United Kingdom since 1903. We have hundreds of respected and supported employees committed to doing the right thing for our customers and colleagues.

Canada Life UK is transforming to create a more customer-focused business by providing our customers with expertise on financial and tax planning, offering home finance and annuities propositions, and providing collective fund solutions to third party customers.

Job Purpose

Are you a visionary with deep data and technology skills in cloud and modern  architectures? Do you have a strong business understanding, ideally in the financial services industry? Are you experienced in defining data strategies and leading architectural transformations that support customer-centricity, digital experience and data-driven decision-making whilst fostering agility, scalability, and compliance? If so, we want you to join our team.

As the Portfolio Architect provides strategic architectural leadership across the IT portfolio, ensuring that technology investment, solution design, and delivery are aligned to enterprise strategy, financial plans, and architectural standards. The role integrates architectural vision with financial insight—informing multiyear planning, modelling cost impacts, and shaping investment decisions to maximise value and sustainability. Reporting to the Head of Architecture and Strategy, you will collaborate with senior IT leaders, key business stakeholders, and architects to make aligned pragmatic, commercially driven decisions that satisfy business objectives. You will be accountable for the development and delivery of key portfolio architecture capabilities, joining architecture roadmaps and strategies across the enterprise.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the architectural roadmap planning (‘runway’) and capability evolution for the overall IT portfolio 
• Integrates architecture and financial insight into coherent, long-term portfolio direction 
• Ensure all initiatives across the portfolio meet architectural principles, have clear business outcomes, and consider compliance requirements and financial planning constraints  
• Provide input into architecture governance, design assurance, and decision support across programmes and domains 
• Promote shared services, common platforms, reusability, and cost-effective architectural practice 
• Ensure that technology assets are managed responsibly, with sight of cost profiles, endoflife risks, and modernisation needs 
• Guides teams in making financially sustainable architectural decision 
• Develop financial models for technology investments across short-, medium-, and longterm timelines 
• Analyse TCO, ROI, cost trajectories, depreciation cycles, and commercial impacts of architectural decisions 
• Provide financial input into annual planning, multi-year investment scenarios, budget cycles, and forecasting 
• Partner with Finance to validate assumptions, align financial projections, and support business case development
• Works closely with delivery leads, product owners, Finance teams, and business stakeholders to ensure coherent, sustainable change 
• Shapes decisions involving cost, value, and architectural risk across diverse stakeholder groups 
• Shapes demand, evaluate feasibility, and ensure prioritisation decisions are informed by both architectural value and financial impact 
• Identifies technology, financial, and strategic risks, ensuring decision-makers understand cost and value implications 
• Makes evidence-based recommendations balancing cost, value, risk, and strategic alignment 

What We’re Looking For

• Highly Skilled in communicating complex architectural and financial trade-offs to senior non-technical stakeholders, can engage effectively with technology specialists and business stakeholders alike, is able to adjust communications style to fit the relevant audience and can respond to challenge in an appropriate manner. Presents complex ideas—technical and financial—in a clear, compelling way 
• Proven ability to translate strategy into actionable architecture direction and develop financially informed multi-year architecture roadmap. Strong analytical, strategic thinking, and problem-solving capabilities. Integrates architecture and financial insight into coherent, long-term portfolio direction. Experience working across complex landscapes involving legacy modernisation, cloud platform
• Capable of making and guiding effective decisions on risk, explaining clearly how the recommendation at hand has been reached, able to make decisions proportionate to the level of technical complexity and organisational risk appetite ms, integration patterns, and data architectures 
• Proven experience in financial modelling, including cost forecasting, scenario planning, TCO modelling, and ROI analysis. Ability to communicate with Finance teams and understanding of budgeting
• Strong ability to visualise, articulate and solve complex problems and concepts by interrogating and using data or intelligence to formulate and influence plans. Able to interpret complex business and technical issues. Can identify and recognise a viable solution or control. Understands and links complex and diverse sets of information to inform the response and approach
• Strong experience and understanding in planning architectural change and the impact to technology infrastructure, data management, security, and operational processes and these need to be catered for in the plan. Adept at identifying potential risks and bottlenecks the transformation may introduce and implement proactive measures to mitigate them. Understanding of cost optimisation strategies in cloud, integration, data, and application estates cost allocation, and financial performance processes
   

Qualifications

• Educated to degree level or equivalent experience in IT
• TOGAF or BCS Certification (desirable)
• PMO and financial planning and strategic planning experience 
• Analytical skills and reporting 

Benefits of working at Canada Life

We believe in recognising and rewarding our people, so we offer a competitive salary and benefits package that’s regularly reviewed. As a Canada Life UK colleague, you’ll receive a competitive salary and comprehensive reward package including a generous pension and bonus scheme, along with, income protection, private medical insurance and life assurance.  We have a fantastic number of other benefits and support services as well as regular personal and professional development.

How we work at Canada Life

Our culture is unique and incredibly important to us.  We care about doing the right thing for our people, customers and community and helping others to build better futures.  Our blueprint behaviours shape and influence how we work, and are central to the relationships we have with others.  Every day we are encouraged to be more curious, own the outcome, face into things together and find a way forward. 

We want colleagues to have rewarding careers with us so we invest in the development of our people, technology and workplaces. That’s why we offer a range of training, flexible working and opportunities to grow and develop.

Diversity and inclusion

Building an inclusive workplace with a diverse workforce where everyone can feel they belong and achieve their potential regardless of gender, ethnicity or any other characteristic is a key commitment for us.  We are proud of the progress we’re making in DEI, and we continue for it to be a significant focus. 

“At Canada Life we believe in the power of great people from different backgrounds, experiences and perspectives coming together to build better futures. Emerging talent is crucial to our growth and creating an environment that continues to inspire us all.”  Nick Harding, Chief People Officer, Canada Life UK

We appreciate that everyone has different work and life responsibilities. We’re happy to discuss flexible working arrangements, including part time, for any of our roles should this be a requirement for you.