Fascinated by the future and captivated by technology?

Smart, driven and want to make a difference in the world?

You’ll fit right in.

Join a diverse team at Visa, where your individuality fits right in. We can provide the opportunity to shape the payments experience globally. Together, let’s transform the way the world pays.

Think you know us?

Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, reliable and secure digital payment network that enables individuals, businesses and economies to thrive.

Individuality fuels our brand and our global team – we’re proud that we are a talented team of 15,000 individuals with unique backgrounds, perspectives and experiences. Therefore, we understand that you are much more than your day job. We encourage quality of life outside of the office, whether it’s taking advantage of agile work schedules or our wellness programs, Visa respects and encourages meaningful work/life balance for everyone. In addition, we offer market leading salary and have a fantastic benefits offering.

So, if you’re not satisfied with the status quo, we can satisfy your desire to explore new territory, giving you the runway to really make an impact, whilst connecting you with teams around the world in a truly inclusive culture that celebrates our uniqueness.

If you think you could support Visa as a Lead Enterprise IT Architect, we want to hear from you – together, let’s make Visa a great place to work.

What’s it all about?

As the appetite for aligning European business strategy and the associated global technology response continues to grow. The Lead Enterprise IT Architect, Reporting to the Chief Officer, Technology and Operations, Europe, will manage the capability to respond to this growing need.

This role will lead the team that drives alignment between European business stakeholders (Products, Innovation, Clients, Clusters) and the Global Technology organisation to ensure a clear, consistent and well documented architecture is maintained for the European business and there is a strategic alignment on both regional and global priorities.

Visa Europe provides the brand, systems, services and rules that enable electronic payments between millions of European customers, businesses and merchants. Visa Europe is part of the global Visa Payments Network. It is an association of over 4, 500 financial institutions – together they influence and oversee the management of the company our systems and our operations.

What we expect of you, day to day.

• Developing elements (patterns, principles, standards, methods and roadmaps) of the Enterprise IT Architecture for the European business
• The role can operate across all IT domains (application, data, and infrastructure) or within a specific domain when required.
• Works with stakeholders to support the strategy and roadmap for the European business and translates this into the future technology direction, together with domain-specific technology architects.
• Ensures that the European architecture meets the future needs of the organisation and provides support to the teams delivering the change.
• Governs the delivery of changes to the architecture against the reference architecture
• Line Manager for a team of Enterprise Architects.
• Works with senior management within the organisation, directing the creation or review of IT strategy to support the strategic requirements of the business. Defines strategies, specifies requirements, commissions or conducts feasibility studies.
• Maintains awareness of technology directions. Produces business cases for recommended new applications of information and communications technologies, identifying the business impact of alternative strategies, the probability of satisfying business needs, the anticipated business benefits and the risks and consequences of failure.
• Represents Visa Europe at appropriate forums and makes a positive contribution to relevant industry groups.
• Line and budgetary management for a small team of Enterprise Architects

What we’re after…

• Experience in of delivering in one or more of the IT architecture domains
• Experience delivering system architecture projects
• Strong interpersonal, influencing and negotiating skills
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Excellent organisational skills
• Ability to liaise with multiple stakeholders at all levels, both internally and externally
• Previous experience of working in a highly available, performance critical technology environment
• Ideally, financial services experience (particularly payments)
• Extensive IT experience across delivery and strategy disciplines
• Has previously established methods, tools and processes to support an IT capability
• A thought leader in the practise of Architecture, having presented at conferences and written white papers
• Experience across several architecture disciplines, such as Business, Application, Infrastructure, Data & Security
• Familiar with industry standard methods, tools and processes to support an Enterprise Architecture function, such as TOGAF.
• Worked with industry standard processes relating to change management and governance, such as Prince, and COBIT
• Influenced changes to processes relating to change management and governance
• Broad and demonstrable experience of working with a diverse set of stakeholders, applying technology capability for business benefit
• Has provided leadership and direction to a team of highly talented IT professionals.
• Effective Communications: Communicates effectively with diverse audiences, using appropriate media and language, ensuring important messages are clearly understood. Experience of writing reports and articles for distribution to the business or professional community with an ability to create a climate that values and rewards good oral and written communication.
• Problem Solving: Ability to drive and gain agreement on the problem-solving process, risk assessment, decision points, and criteria. Considers long-term trends and broad business implications for alternatives, successfully organising problem solvers and stakeholders for high-impact problems. Guides others in the process of eliciting alternatives and assessing their impact and brings about successful resolutions to high-impact or cross-functional problems.
• Simplifying Complex Concepts: Consistently uses the right level of technical terminology for the audience and anticipates the level of readiness of the audience to comprehend new technical information. Has an ability to explain concepts and information so the audience appreciates significance beyond meaning, finding analogies and vocabulary to help people of varied backgrounds firmly grasp information.
• Team Work: Promotes focus on team accomplishments, sharing credit. Evaluates individual and team effectiveness; recommends or makes improvements. Monitors individual and team morale; intervenes appropriately. Maintains high levels of enthusiasm and energy under difficult or adverse circumstances. Influences the process of determining team strategy and policy. Champions value of teams in accomplishing organisational goals
• Written Communications: Produces excellent written materials in business and industry specific technical language seeking to ensure that the key messages are understood as intended.
• Analytical Thinking: Is able to choose among a diverse set of analytical tools according to the nature of the situation, identifying many possible causes for a problem based on prior experience and current research.  Weighs the costs, benefits, risks, and chances for success before recommending a course of action.
• Influencing: Gains acceptance of ideas and suggestions from senior business executives. Experience of defining strategies and plans that have influenced multiple decision makers. Demonstrates expert ability to influence at all levels of the organisation and debates issues to bring the most critical points to the forefront for decision making. Influences high-impact, high-risk and highly complex situations.
• Facilitation: Ability to identify and design the specific type of group process required by a situation, maintaining the group's focus on established scope and goals. Builds a cooperative spirit and elicits maximum participation from each group member. Identifies, clarifies, and summarises results of group process.
• Leadership: Works with team members to set and communicate challenging team goals.  Delegates, coordinates, and motivates the team effectively to achieve results. Track record of making tough decisions - personnel and otherwise - when necessary. Leads from the front, translating vision into specific functional or departmental initiatives. Has the ability for form and lead virtual teams for the purpose of strategy development.
• Decision Making & Critical Thinking: Uses effective decision-making approaches such as consultative, command, or consensus. Leverages experience in analysing relevant data and assessing implications of alternatives, identifying decision options and points, predicting their potential impact. Evaluates past decisions for insights to improve decision-making process.
• Planning, Tactical and Strategic: Contributes to the overall strategic divisional goals and plans of the organisation. Creates and implements a strategy for supporting current and future business needs. Directs the development, maintenance, and communication of own function's strategic plan. Develops long-term strategies to deliver services that keep pace with technology trends.
• Architecture Development: Ability to create cohesive global architectures for applications, information and infrastructure; oversee the integration and migration to target enterprise-wide architectures, including identification and consultation regarding planning, migration and implementation issues. Can define architectural principles and standards for organization. Has proven experience with service-oriented analysis, definition, and design, leading planning and strategies for transitioning of applications and portfolios. Has led the development of standards, best practices, and governance for Enterprise Architecture accommodating cultural, political and organisational behaviour.

Diversity & Inclusion

Universal acceptance for everyone, everywhere, is not only our brand promise, it’s the foundation of our company culture. We foster a feeling of connectedness in the workplace, support diversity of thought, culture and background, fight for important initiatives like Equal Pay and actively work to eliminate unconscious biases that hold us all back.

By leveraging the diverse backgrounds and perspectives of our worldwide teams, Visa is a better place to work and a better business partner to our clients.