Job Description

Mission of the role:

Define and drive a coherent architectural direction across Northwave, ensuring that technology choices, platforms, systems, and decision-making processes align with business objectives and form a scalable, consistent and well-integrated whole.

Context:

Northwave is evolving its technology landscape to better support both:

• High-quality cybersecurity service delivery

• Efficient and reliable internal operations

Currently, responsibilities across IT and engineering are distributed across teams, with varying tools, processes, and priorities. This results not only in fragmentation of the technology landscape, but also in inconsistent decision-making and limited transparency in how architectural choices are made across teams.

This role is introduced to:

· Establish clear architectural direction and principles across Northwave, building on and aligning the expert input from technical leads, engineers, etc.

· Establish clear and consistent decision-making processes for architectural topics across teams

· Ensure coherence and consistency across platforms, systems, and integrations

· Bridge Northwave strategy and business objectives to engineering execution and technology choices

What success looks like (first 6–9 months):

· A clear and shared architectural vision is defined and understood across teams

· A set of practical architectural principles and standards is established and actively used

· Improved consistency and alignment in technology and platform decisions across teams

Reduced fragmentation through:

• Better integration and interoperability

• Clearer platform choices and boundaries

• An effective architecture forum is in place and functioning, with strong engagement from engineering leads

• Engineering teams are able to make better and more consistent design decisions independently

• Clear and consistent decision-making processes for architectural topics are defined and applied across teams

Key Responsibilities:

· Define architectural direction – Establish and communicate a clear architectural vision aligned with Northwave’s strategy and operational needs

· Set principles and standards – Define and maintain pragmatic architectural principles and guidelines that enable consistency without creating unnecessary bureaucracy

· Define and improve decision-making processes – Establish clear, transparent, and scalable ways of making architectural decisions across teams and forums

· Ensure platform coherence – Oversee the coherence of platforms, systems, and integrations, ensuring they work together as a unified landscape

· Lead the architecture forum – Facilitate alignment between lead engineers and stakeholders, ensuring architectural decisions are discussed, challenged, aligned, and clearly concluded

· Bridge strategy and execution – Translate business and operational needs into architectural direction, and ensure these are reflected in engineering decisions

· Guide key design decisions – Act as a sparring partner and key decision authority on major cross-team or high-impact design choices

Requirements

A strategic and pragmatic leader who uses architecture to bring structure, alignment, and coherence to complex environments. Able to operate across business and engineering domains, ensuring consistent decision-making and strong alignment between direction and execution. Comfortable influencing without formal authority, and capable of introducing clarity and structure without slowing down delivery.

Key Skills & Capabilities:

· Architectural thinking – Strong ability to structure and reason about complex systems, platforms, and integrations at a high level

· Structuring complexity – Able to create clarity and coherence across fragmented technology landscapes

· Pragmatic governance – Experience defining and applying architectural principles without introducing unnecessary overhead

· Process & governance design – Ability to design lightweight, effective processes that improve decision-making and consistency without slowing down delivery

· Platform and integration focus – Understanding of how platforms and systems fit together within a broader landscape

· Influence without authority – Proven ability to guide and align engineering teams and stakeholders without direct control

· Decision-making & trade-offs – Able to balance long-term architectural integrity with short-term delivery needs

· Communication & alignment – Strong communicator across technical and non-technical audiences, able to create shared understanding

· Technical credibility – Sufficient technical understanding to engage meaningfully with engineers and challenge decisions where needed, without being the primary designer or technical expert

· Track record of improving coherence – Experience reducing fragmentation and increasing consistency across platforms or systems

What we offer

• Competitive salary, paid on the 25th, with annual review and 8% holiday allowance

• Pension through Nationale Nederlanden, Northwave contributes 50%, including partner pension

• 25 vacation days plus all Dutch national holidays

• Generous special leave for marriage, birth, bereavement, care and parental leave

• Lease car based on salary scale (electric welcome), or choose €0.23/km plus 50% of the lease budget as mobility allowance

• MacBook, phone and accessories fully provided

• €200 net annual allowance for flexible and remote working

• Alleo budget for sports, wellness and leisure of your choice

• Learning budget from €700 to €1,200 per year, up to €4,500 for longer programmes

• Referral bonus when you bring in a great new colleague

• Hybrid working from a modern office in Utrecht

• Personal growth through the Role Model and FeedForward cycle, your ambitions and development front and centre

Interested in building systems that are used under real pressure, not in theory? Contact Youri Roelofs at youri.roelofs@northwave-cybersecurity.com