Chief Architect

ING Group

Brussels, Belgium

The opportunity

As Chief Architect for Tech Belgium, you are accountable for the architectural direction and outcomes of ING Belgium. You define and continuously evolve the target architecture, ensure alignment with ING’s global architecture strategy, and steer architectural decision‑making across all business and technology domains.

This role combines strategic leadership, people development, and architectural governance in a complex, regulated, and fast‑changing environment.

The team

You lead the Enterprise Architecture community in Belgium, including enterprise architects and chapter leads, and provide functional guidance to solution architects. You will report hierarchically to theCIO Belgiumand have a strong functional reporting line to the Global Head of Tech Strategy & Enterprise Architecture, being part of both their management teams.

Roles andresponsibilities

In this role, you are accountable for the following core responsibilities, which are essential to shaping and governing ING Belgium’s target architecture, in close alignment with business strategy, global enterprise architecture, and regulatory requirements.

Target Architecture Ownership
- Define, own and communicate the target architecture for ING Belgium, aligned with ING group standards and principles
Strategic Translation &Road mapping
- Translate business and technology strategy into clear architectural choices and multi‑horizon roadmaps
Architectural Decision‑Making
- Steer architectural decisions to support digital transformation, customer experience, resilience, and cost efficiency
Landscape Simplification & Technical Debt Reduction
- Actively reduce technical debt and drive simplification of the IT landscape
Structural Change Across Domains
- Guide and oversee structural changes across tribes and domains, ensuring coherence and reuse
Business & Portfolio Governance
- Provide architectural input to quarterly business reviews, highlighting priorities, dependencies, risks, and trade‑offs
Architecture Community Leadership
- Lead, develop and sustain a high‑performing architecture community through a strong chapter model
Group Alignment & Representation
- Represent Tech Belgium within Group Architecture, contributing to global alignment, learning, and reuse of best practices
Next to the above, you role‑model ING’s Orange Leadership behaviours:
- You set the directionby translating strategy into clear architectural direction and making deliberate, transparent choices for ING
- You lead by lifting othersthrough trust, coaching and constructive challenge, fostering collaboration and open dialogue
- You equip your team for win after winby setting clear outcomes, addressing root causes, and taking ownership of architectural decisions

How to succeed

We hire smart people like you for your potential. Our biggest expectation is that you’ll stay curious. Keep learning. Take on responsibility. In return, we’ll back you to develop into an even more awesome version of yourself.

Experience

Extensive experience (typically 5–10 years) as a lead or enterprise architect in complex environments
Proven people leadership experience, developing senior professionals ina complexmatrix organisation
Strong experience with large scale universal banking IT landscapes

Technical expertise

Deep understanding of enterprise architecture and target‑state design in large, regulated environments
Proven experience with complex banking IT landscapes, spanning applications, platforms, integration, data, and infrastructure
Ability to assess and govern cloud, platform, and integration architectures at enterprise scale
Strong grasp of security, resilience, and risk considerations as integral parts of architectural decision‑making
Experience operating in Agile‑at‑scale organisations, balancing autonomy, alignment, and architectural coherence

Competencies & skills

Influence & communication: Explains complex architecture topics simply to executives and engineers; manages conflicting priorities.
People leadership: Builds capability, coaches talent, and cultivates a culture of craftsmanship and excellence.
Change leadership: Drives adoption of standards and behaviors across a matrixed, international organization.