About The Role

We’re looking for a Service Architect to join our Service Architect, Design and Transition team in Enterprise Technology. If you’re looking for a new challenge with an organisation committed to putting customers first, aiming high and working together, you’ll thrive here.

The core part of the role is to produce end-to-end service designs for strategic technology initiatives, integrating architecture, security, operations, supplier, resilience, and support requirements into a single consumable service model.

Job Type : Fixed term contract for 18 months

Location : Birmingham, Telford and Edinburgh. Hybrid working

Flexible working : All roles are open to part-time, job-share and other types of flexibility. We will discuss what is important to you and balancing this with business requirements during the recruitment process. You can read more about flexible working here.

Closing Date: 09/09/2026

Salary and Benefits: Between £65,000-75,000 plus an indicative bonus range of of 16-32% private medical cover, 38 days annual leave, excellent pension, 12x salary life assurance, career breaks, income protection, 3x volunteering days and much more.

Who are we?

We’re Standard Life, a retirement specialist focused entirely on retirement savings and income. We champion the belief that everyone’s journey to and through retirement can be better, and for more than 200 years, we’ve been helping our customers plan and prepare for their financial futures.

Life today is increasingly complicated, uncertain and unpredictable. People move through different careers, face unexpected moments and navigate important choices. We offer our colleagues flexibility, trust and benefits that work for whatever life brings. In return we expect curiosity, connection, accountability and high standards. We make room for what matters - so you can bring your best, every day.

The role

The Service Architect and Designer is responsible for the strategic planning, design, and governance of IT services to ensure they meet business needs and are aligned with organizational objectives. This role bridges business requirements and technical implementation, ensuring that services are well-architected, scalable, and efficient throughout their lifecycle.

Key accountabilities of this roles

Design and document IT services, including infrastructure, application, and support components, ensuring they meet functional and non-functional requirements.
Ensure services are designed for scalability, resilience, and operational excellence.
Collaborate with business stakeholders to gather requirements and translate them into service designs.
Develop detailed service design packages, including SLAs, OLAs, capacity planning, security requirements, and performance metrics.
Establish and maintain service architecture and design standards, ensuring alignment with industry best practices such as ITIL, COBIT, and TOGAF.
Serve as a liaison between technical teams and business leaders, ensuring clear communication of service architecture and design decisions.
Continuously review and optimise service designs to improve cost-efficiency, user experience, and reliability.
Identify potential risks associated with service designs and propose mitigation strategies.

What are we looking for?

Strong knowledge of ITIL service design and architecture frameworks (e.g., TOGAF, Zachman)
Demonstrable experience in designing and delivering enterprise-grade IT services.
Proficiency in identifying and addressing risks and inefficiencies in service designs.
Proven ability to align service designs with organisational goals and long-term IT strategies
Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and modern IT environments (e.g., microservices, containerization).
Highly organised with the ability to multitask and effectively manage changing and competing priorities
Financial Services experience desirable

We want to hire the whole version of you.

We are committed to ensuring that everyone feels accepted and welcome applicants from all backgrounds. If your experience looks different from what we’ve advertised and you believe that you can bring value to the role, we’d love to hear from you.

If you require any adjustments to the recruitment process, please let us know so we can help you to be at your best.

We’re reviewing applications as they come in and may close this role before the closing date, so apply early to avoid missing out.

Find out more about working at Standard Life #LI-GJ1

Guide for Candidates: standardlifeplc.pagetiger.com/guideforcandidates
Find or get answers from our colleagues: www.standardlifeplc.com/careers/talk-to-us