Job Description

, United Kingdom

Job Family Group:

Information Technology (IT)

Worker Type:

Regular

Posting Start Date:

September 16, 2026

Business Unit:

Information & Digital Technology

Experience Level:

Experienced Professionals

Job Description:

What’s the role

The Principal Architect for Trading & Supply Data & Analytics is accountable for defining and governing the architecture that enables T&S’ data-powered future. The role leads the design and evolution of an integrated data ecosystem that connects data, digital services, and enterprise intelligence at scale, ensuring that data and analytics capabilities are secure, reusable, interoperable, and aligned with business outcomes. The role collaborates on architectural guidance to organise and structure the delivery of AI use cases leveraging AI Platform foundational services.

A key accountability is the architecture, design, and implementation of the T&S Data Platform landscape, providing the foundational capabilities required for trusted and AI-ready data consumption. This includes ownership of the architectural direction, standards, integration patterns, and platforms. The role ensures these services are established as reusable T&S capabilities.

The Principal Architect ensures solutions are architected once and leveraged many times, balancing innovation with governance, scalability, maintainability, and long-term value creation. Working across the many parts of the T&S business, data, digital, and technology teams, the role drives the adoption of common platforms, architectural patterns, and delivery approaches that accelerate business value realisation while reducing duplication and technical debt.

The Principal Architect is accountable for architecture direction, decision coherence and architecture outcomes across a connected set of domains, portfolios or enterprise transformation landscapes. The role translates business and enterprise strategy into target architectures, investment roadmaps, standards and guardrails, ensuring architecture decisions create enterprise value, reduce complexity and enable safe, scalable digital, data and analytics transformation.

What you’ll be doing

Key Accountabilities:

• Provides architecture leadership that aligns business strategy, enterprise architecture, and technology investments.
• Accountable for enterprise architecture direction and outcomes across a connected set of domains, portfolios or enterprise transformation landscapes, ensuring architecture decisions deliver enterprise value, coherence, resilience, security, scalability and simplification.
• Translates business and enterprise strategy into target architecture, strategic roadmaps, platform direction, standards, principles and guardrails across business process, application, data, integration, technology, cloud and security dimensions.
• Ensures cross-domain architecture coherence, resolving conflicts between T&S LoB domain strategies, product roadmaps, delivery priorities and enterprise target states.
• Acts as enterprise decision authority for material architecture choices spanning domains, portfolios or major transformation landscapes, including approval of significant trade-offs, exceptions, deviations and step-outs from enterprise guardrails.
• Represents architecture in executive governance forums, providing trusted advice to CIOs, business leaders, enterprise architects and senior technology stakeholders.
• Shapes enterprise portfolio and technology investment decisions, ensuring funding, sequencing and prioritisation align to target architecture, business capabilities, enterprise value, risk reduction and simplification outcomes.
• Drives adoption of enterprise standards, reusable patterns, reference architectures and enterprise technology services across domains, reducing duplication, complexity, risk and technical debt.
• Leads and develops a multi-layer architecture organisation, line managing Lead Architects and ensuring effective leadership of their architecture teams, architecture capacity, performance, succession and capability development.
• Sets strategic technology direction for the supported enterprise landscape, including platform strategy, lifecycle choices, simplification themes, reuse priorities and emerging technology implications.
• Leads and champions the data-first architecture transformation across the enterprise scope, scaling AI-enabled and AI-ready architecture practices, machine-readable artefacts, structured decision records, automated validation, AI-assisted assurance and responsible AI guardrails.
• Ensures responsible AI is embedded in enterprise architecture decisions, including data quality, transparency, security, privacy, explainability, human oversight, auditability, operational support and regulatory considerations.
• Influences enterprise technology strategy and transformation outcomes, using market, technology, regulatory and business insight to shape opportunities, risks, investment choices and enterprise roadmaps.

What you bring

• Master’s degree or equivalent qualification in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related discipline.
• Extensive IT experience, including senior architecture leadership roles.
• Experience across large-scale, complex, multi-domain technology environments.
• Demonstrated success leading enterprise-wide architecture transformation and strategic technology initiatives.
• Demonstrated knowledge of the trading business domain, commodity trading knowledge is preferred.

What we offer

You bring your skills and experience to Shell and in return you work with talented, committed people on one of the most important challenges facing our planet. You’ll have the opportunity to develop the skills you need to grow in an environment where we value honesty, integrity, and respect for one another. You’ll be able to balance your priorities as you become the best version of yourself.

• Progress as a person as we work on the energy transition together.
• Continuously grow the transferable skills you need to get ahead.
• Work at the forefront of technology, trends, and practices.
• Collaborate with experienced colleagues with unique expertise.
• Achieve your balance in a values-led culture that encourages you to be the best version of yourself.
• Benefit from flexible working hours, and the possibility of remote/mobile working.
• Perform at your best with a competitive starting salary and annual performance related salary increase – our pay and benefits packages are considered to be among the best in the world.
• Take advantage of paid parental leave, including for non-birthing parents.
• Join an organisation working to become one of the most diverse and inclusive in the world. We strongly encourage applicants of all genders, ages, ethnicities, cultures, abilities, sexual orientation, and life experiences to apply.
• Grow as you progress through diverse career opportunities in national and international teams.
• Gain access to a wide range of training and development programmes.

We'd like you to know that Shell has a bold goal: to become one of the world’s most diverse and inclusive companies. You can get to know more about how we're working towards that goal, click here

Shell is working to advance an inclusive, psychologically safe and accessible environment where people with disabilities can excel. If you require any accommodations or accessibility adjustments (e.g. assistive technology, communication support, any other) during the application or interview process, please let us know directly via careers@shell.com . We strive to ensure that our process and workplace is accessible to everyone and are dedicated to making reasonable adjustments to support your needs.

Shell in The United Kingdom

Shell UK remains one of the North Sea’s biggest producers, supplying around 10% of the UK’s total oil and gas needs. But perhaps the most recognisable face of Shell in the UK is our network of over 1,000 Shell-branded service stations.

In the years ahead, as the UK looks to strengthen energy security and deliver its 2050 net-zero goal, Shell UK aims to play a crucial role. We aim to be a major investor in the UK energy system by helping our customers decarbonise with a focus on transport and industry.

Shell is a vital contributor to the UK, supporting energy security, jobs and economic value. We provide energy to fuel homes, hospitals, schools, vehicles, machinery and factories. Our history here dates back over 125 years. A UK-headquartered global energy leader, and leading FTSE multinational, we are active across the country’s energy system.

In the years ahead, as the UK looks to strengthen energy security and deliver its 2050 net-zero goal, Shell UK aims to play a crucial role. We aim to be a major investor in the UK energy system by helping our customers decarbonise with a focus on transport and industry.

DISCLAIMER:

Please note: We occasionally amend or withdraw Shell jobs and reserve the right to do so at any time, including prior to the advertised closing date. Before applying, you are advised to read our data protection policy. This policy describes the processing that may be associated with your personal data and informs you that your personal data may be transferred to Shell/Shell Group companies around the world. The Shell Group and its approved recruitment consultants will never ask you for a fee to process or consider your application for a career with Shell. Anyone who demands such a fee is not an authorised Shell representative and you are strongly advised to refuse any such demand. Shell is an Equal Opportunity Employer.