Principal Transformation Enterprise Architect — Enterprise Industries, UK&I

Job description

It all started when engineer Fred Luddy wrote code that automated a tedious task for his coworker, Phyllis. She cried tears of joy. That moment inspired Fred to build a company that could do that for everyone—freeing people from busywork so they could focus on meaningful work. Today, ServiceNow is the AI control tower for business reinvention. Our ServiceNow AI platform brings together any AI, any data, and any workflow— helping 85% of the Fortune 500® work smarter, faster, and better. We're building an AI-native culture where technology and talent are unstoppable together. And we're just getting started. Join us to put AI to work for people. ServiceNow is seeking a Principal Transformation Enterprise Architect to set the architectural direction for enterprise-wide transformation across our largest and most complex customers in our enterprise Industries team for the UK and Ireland. Working alongside business and technology leaders, you will shape the choices that determine how these organisations change. This is a senior individual-contributor role within our pre-sales solution consulting organisation, combining strategic judgement, architectural depth and executive influence. You will work where the problem is not yet clearly defined and the path forward is contested. Customers may be balancing competing business priorities, fragmented technology estates, established investments and demanding operational or regulatory constraints. Your role is to turn that complexity into a clear transformation direction: identify the business capabilities that need to change, evaluate architectural options and shape a practical roadmap that connects ambition, investment and measurable outcomes. As a trusted adviser to business executives, CIOs, CTOs and chief enterprise architects, you will challenge assumptions constructively and build alignment across business units, technology teams and partners. You will connect business strategy, operating-model change, enterprise architecture and technology investment—explaining the choices and trade-offs, not simply presenting a solution. Working with account leaders and specialist teams, you will provide architectural leadership on strategic sales opportunities. You will define how ServiceNow fits within the customer’s wider enterprise architecture, develop compelling transformation propositions and guide executive working sessions towards agreed decisions and priorities. You will maintain a credible path from the proposed architecture to delivery, working closely with customers, partners and implementation specialists. We are looking for someone who has already shaped significant, cross-functional transformation in complex enterprises. You will bring evidence of influencing executive decisions, resolving competing stakeholder priorities and setting architectural direction across multiple programmes. Technical expertise matters, but success in this role depends on using it to guide business choices, lead through others and create lasting value for customers. What you get to do in this role Our Enterprise Industries team serves manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, retail, travel and services customers. You will: Shape transformation direction. Work with customer leaders to understand their business strategy, economics and operating model. Identify the capabilities that need to change and connect them to measurable customer, employee and operational outcomes. Lead through complexity and uncertainty. Frame problems before requirements are settled. Navigate competing business-unit priorities, fragmented ownership, legacy investments and delivery constraints to establish a practical direction. Influence consequential executive decisions. Build trusted relationships with business executives, technology leaders and enterprise architects. Challenge assumptions, evaluate alternatives and secure alignment on priorities, architectural choices and the case for change. Develop enterprise architectures and roadmaps. Connect current and target states across business capabilities, processes, applications, data and technology. Make sequencing, dependencies, governance, risk and investment trade-offs explicit. Position ServiceNow within the wider enterprise. Define its role alongside core business systems, cloud services and other enterprise platforms. Explain what should change, what should remain and how the proposed architecture will work across organisational and technology boundaries. Guide AI-enabled transformation. Identify where AI, automation and more autonomous workflows can create value. Help customers assess data readiness, integration, human oversight, security, governance and operational risk before committing to an approach. Lead strategic pre-sales engagements. Partner with account leaders, solution consultants, industry specialists and partners to shape complex opportunities, develop compelling propositions and support customer investment decisions in a fast-moving sales environment. Turn executive working sessions into decisions. Use discovery, human-centred design and architecture workshops to establish a shared understanding, explore options and agree outcomes, priorities and next steps. Create a credible path to delivery. Work with customer and partner teams to validate assumptions, feasibility and dependencies. Maintain continuity between the transformation proposition, architectural direction and implementation planning, with clear ownership and handoffs. Lead through others. Align specialists across multiple workstreams, mentor colleagues and strengthen the team’s architectural judgement. Develop reusable approaches, industry perspectives and thought leadership, and share customer insights with relevant ServiceNow teams. To be successful in this role, you will bring: A sustained record of enterprise transformation leadership. Substantial experience in enterprise architecture, technology strategy or transformation consulting, typically developed over 10 or more years. Equivalent experience with demonstrable principal-level impact will also be considered. Your examples should show decisions and outcomes you personally shaped—not just programmes you participated in. Strategic judgement in complex situations. Evidence of framing ambiguous problems, assessing options and making recommendations where business priorities, technology constraints, investment choices and risks conflict. You can explain both your chosen approach and the alternatives you rejected. Executive influence and stakeholder alignment. A track record of influencing senior business and technology leaders, handling constructive disagreement and building agreement across organisational boundaries. You can turn architectural analysis into a clear executive recommendation and case for change. Enterprise-wide architectural depth. Experience shaping target architectures and phased roadmaps across business capabilities, operating models, processes, applications, data and technology. Your work spans multiple systems and functions, rather than a single application domain alone. Relevant industry depth. Strong experience in at least one of manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, retail, travel or services, with the ability to apply that knowledge across adjacent sectors. You understand how organisations in your sector generate value, serve customers, manage costs and risk, and make investment decisions. Deep expertise in every sector is not expected. Business-value and investment thinking. Ability to connect architectural choices to commercial and operational outcomes, develop business-case assumptions with relevant specialists, and explain costs, benefits, dependencies and time-to-value. You distinguish credible value hypotheses from unsupported claims. Customer-facing commercial experience. Experience in strategic pre-sales, consulting, customer-side architecture or transformation delivery, together with the ability to shape opportunit