Associate Director - IT Infrastructure & Enterprise Architect - Lotus's

The role would reports to Group Chief Technology & Data Officers. The Head of IT Infrastructure & Enterprise Architect for the Retail Industry is responsible for defining, leading, and governing the organization’s enterprise architecture and IT infrastructure strategy to support omni-channel retail operations. This role ensures that infrastructure platforms, enterprise systems, and digital retail solutions are secure, scalable, resilient, and aligned with business growth, customer experience, and operational efficiency objectives.

The role combines strategic architecture leadership with hands-on oversight of infrastructure operations, enabling seamless store, warehouse, e-commerce, and corporate system integration.

Enterprise Architecture & Strategy

• Define and own the enterprise architecture roadmap aligned with retail business strategy and digital transformation initiatives.
• Establish architecture standards, principles, and governance across retail applications, infrastructure, and data platforms.
• Ensure alignment between business capabilities (stores, supply chain, merchandising, CRM, e-commerce) and IT solutions.
• Act as a strategic technology advisor to executive leadership and business stakeholders.

IT Infrastructure Leadership

• Oversee on-premises, cloud, and hybrid infrastructure supporting retail stores, data centers, and digital platforms.
• Ensure high availability and performance for mission-critical retail systems (POS, ERP, WMS, OMS, CRM, e-commerce).
• Lead capacity planning, disaster recovery (DR), and business continuity planning (BCP) for retail operations.
• Manage infrastructure vendors, service providers, contracts, and SLAs.

Retail Solutions Architecture

• Design and govern end-to-end architectures for retail systems including POS, store systems, ERP, supply chain, loyalty, and digital commerce platforms.
• Ensure seamless integration between store systems, e-commerce platforms, payment gateways, and backend enterprise systems.
• Promote modern architecture patterns such as microservices, APIs, event-driven architecture, and cloud-native solutions.
• Guide teams on adopting scalable omni-channel and customer-centric solutions.

Security, Compliance & Resilience

• Ensure infrastructure and enterprise architectures comply with security, data privacy, and regulatory requirements (e.g., PCI-DSS, data protection laws).
• Partner with Information Security teams on security architecture, threat mitigation, and risk management.
• Implement identity and access management, monitoring, logging, and fraud prevention controls.

Team Leadership & Governance

• Lead, mentor, and develop infrastructure and enterprise architecture teams.
• Establish clear objectives, KPIs, and performance management for teams.
• Drive architecture review boards (ARB) and decision-making forums.
• Foster a culture of innovation, reliability, and continuous improvement.

Financial & Operational Management

• Own infrastructure and architecture budgets, cost optimization initiatives, and ROI tracking.
• Drive cloud cost management, vendor consolidation, and operational efficiency.
• Ensure operational best practices using ITIL, DevOps, and SRE principles.

Key Stakeholders

• Executive Leadership Team
• Retail Operations, Merchandising, Supply Chain, and E-commerce Teams
• Application Development & DevOps Teams
• Information Security, Risk & Compliance Teams
• External Vendors, System Integrators, and Technology Partners

Requirements:
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or related field.
• 12–15+ years of IT experience with strong focus on infrastructure and enterprise architecture.
• 5+ years in a senior IT leadership or enterprise architecture role.
• Proven experience in retail or consumer-facing industries.
• Strong expertise in cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, and/or GCP).
• Retail systems: POS, ERP, WMS, OMS, CRM, loyalty platforms
• Infrastructure: data centers, networks, virtualization, storage, backup, DR
• Cloud & hybrid architecture
• Enterprise architecture frameworks (TOGAF preferred)
• System integration, APIs, middleware, and messaging platforms
• Security architecture, PCI-DSS, and data privacy compliance