Director of Architecture - Tech Standards

The Director of Architecture exists to make it easier for engineers to do the right thing. The central architecture team succeeds only if it reduces cognitive load for Business Units and makes engineers' lives easier in practice. The role leads Booking.com's enterprise architecture and owns the architectural standards and Tech Guiding Principles that guide it, ensuring they create sensible defaults, reduce cognitive load, and align with the company's strategic and technology direction. The Tech Guiding Principles are shaped as a company-wide effort, bringing together architects, principal engineers and senior technical leaders from across Booking.com. The role is not to define the Tech Guiding Principles in isolation, but to bring together the strongest ideas emerging across the Business Units and turn them into a shared technical direction for Booking.com. The role leads a central team of Enterprise Architects and senior technical individual contributors, while working across Booking.com to align Business Units on shared architectural direction, sensible defaults and long-term technology choices. It combines direct leadership of a senior architecture team with influence in a federated organisation, and is accountable for turning central architecture capability into measurable impact across the company. The Director of Architecture plays a leading role in defining Booking.com's technology enablement model for how teams build, deliver, secure, and run software. Working with Business Units, Building & Running, Core Platforms, Developer Experience, Security and other foundational teams, the role defines the defaults, shared foundations and operating model that reduce friction across the Software Development Lifecycle and Product Delivery Lifecycle. The role also helps define how AI changes the way teams design, build, test, release and operate software. This includes identifying where AI can accelerate delivery, improve quality and reduce repetitive work, while ensuring teams have the right feedback loops, safety measures and platform capabilities to adopt it well at scale. The Director of Architecture ensures enterprise direction is grounded in practical delivery needs and reflected in how teams build and run software, working through Business Unit architecture teams and senior engineering leaders. Success depends on understanding the pressures Business Unit leaders and engineering teams are under, and using that understanding to make central architecture feel like support rather than interference. The role does not replace solution architecture within the Business Units; it provides enterprise direction, cross-BU standards, interoperability principles and clear decision-making frameworks to reduce friction, avoid unnecessary coupling, and support engineering velocity. Where risk, regulation and compliance demand it, particularly in domains such as FinTech, the role helps ensure the right controls are built into the defaults, tooling and delivery workflows so teams can stay compliant without unnecessary manual gates. The role also helps Booking.com deal pragmatically with its existing technology estate. Success is not measured by perfect consistency or full compliance everywhere, but by using data and judgment to help teams fix the biggest risks, reduce the most harmful complexity and improve the parts of the estate that matter most.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and develop a central team of Enterprise Architects and senior technical ICs, setting clear expectations, building a strong senior team and creating the conditions for high impact.

• Act as a connected leader by developing senior talent, building trust across organisational boundaries, and creating alignment through empathy, service, and influence rather than authority.

• Define and evolve Booking.com's enterprise architecture, architectural standards and Tech Guiding Principles in line with strategic priorities and long-term technology direction.

• Lead the Tech Guiding Principles as a company-wide effort, bringing together architects, principal engineers and senior technical leaders to identify the strongest ideas emerging across the Business Units and turn them into shared technical direction and sensible defaults for Booking.com.

• Play a leading role in defining Booking.com's technology enablement model for how teams build, deliver, secure, and run software across the company.

• Define the defaults, shared foundations and operating model for software delivery at Booking.com, working with Business Units, Building & Running, Core Platforms, Developer Experience, Security, and other foundational teams.

• Improve engineering velocity by reducing avoidable coupling, duplication and ambiguity, and by embedding sensible defaults into shared platforms, tooling, guardrails, and reusable patterns.

• Lead the definition of how Booking.com's SDLC and Product Delivery Lifecycle should evolve as AI changes the way software is designed, built, tested, released, and operated.

• Provide architectural direction on how AI is used across design, development, testing, release, operations and continuous improvement, with the goal of accelerating delivery, improving quality and making work easier for engineers.

• Align enterprise architecture with Business Unit solution architecture, ensuring local decisions support interoperability, reduce friction and maintain long-term technology coherence where it matters.

• Drive greater interoperability across Business Units and systems through clear architectural boundaries, interfaces, contracts and decision rights.

• Establish clear decision-making frameworks, default paths and exception mechanisms that allow teams to move quickly within clear architectural guardrails.

• Use data and pragmatic judgment to help teams identify and fix the most important risks in the existing technology estate, rather than driving for theoretical consistency everywhere.

• Maintain and evolve the Tech Radar to guide technology choices and investment in future-fit capabilities and patterns.

• Provide enterprise architecture oversight in regulated and high-risk domains, ensuring compliance and risk requirements are met through automated, scalable defaults rather than manual gates.

• Partner with strategy, product and business leaders to identify future capability needs and reflect them in Booking.com's enterprise architecture and technology direction.

• Define metrics that measure the impact of enterprise architecture on engineering speed, delivery quality, interoperability, resilience, operational health, and risk reduction.

Experience and Skills

• Significant experience in software, solution and enterprise architecture within large-scale, distributed technology organisations.

• Proven experience leading teams of Enterprise Architects and senior technical experts, and building strong senior talent.

• Strong experience defining and evolving enterprise architecture across business, data, application and technology domains.

• Proven ability to combine direct leadership of a central team with effective leadership across a federated organisation, using empathy and sound judgment to build trust with Business Units.

• Strong track record of influencing senior engineering, product and business stakeholders and building alignment across organisational boundaries.

• Deep understanding of interoperability, architectural boundaries, interfaces, contracts and independently deliverable capabilities.

• Strong understanding of platform architecture, developer workflows and how sensible defaults can be embedded into shared foundations to improve engineering effectiveness.

• Experience shaping software delivery models, developer workflows or internal platform strategies in large-scale engineering organisations.

• Strong understanding of modern SDLC practices and the architectural dependencies required to support efficient, secure and reliable software delivery.

• Strong technical depth in modern cloud technologies, distributed systems and software architecture, with the judgment to apply that depth to real engineering and product delivery problems.

• Deep technical credibility in software architecture and distributed systems, with the ability to engage senior engineers and Principal Engineers on complex technical trade-offs, challenge assumptions and make sound architectural judgments.

• Strong track record of solving hard technical problems in large-scale systems, not only setting direction through influence and communication.

• Strong understanding of emerging technologies, including AI, and the judgment to apply them in practical ways.

• Experience defining operating models, controls or decision-making frameworks for AI-assisted engineering workflows is strongly preferred.

• Strong business acumen and the ability to connect architecture and technology strategy to business priorities and long-term capability building.

• Experience operating in regulated or high-risk domains where governance, compliance and traceability are important architectural concerns.

• Strong pragmatic judgment, including knowing when to push for a shared standard and when to allow a Business Unit to diverge for the sake of speed or local effectiveness.

• Ability to communicate a clear technology vision and translate it into a practical architectural direction.

• Clear and transparent communication, with the ability to align diverse stakeholders around a common direction and make central architecture feel useful, practical and service-oriented.

• Ability to create momentum across distributed technical groups and operate effectively in ambiguity and organisational complexity.

• Sound judgment on where to invest for long-term value, while maintaining a customer-centric and inclusive leadership mindset.

Pre-Employment Screening

If your application is successful, your personal data may be used for a pre-employment screening check by a third party as permitted by applicable law. Depending on the vacancy and applicable law, a pre-employment screening may include employment history, education and other information (such as media information) that may be necessary for determining your qualifications and suitability for the position.