Director of Architecture: Senior Principal Architect

Corporate & Department Overview

Nomura aspires to create a better world by harnessing the power of financial markets.  We are a financial services group with an integrated global network, servicing our clients for over 100 years across over 30 countries.  By connecting markets East & West, we service the needs of individuals, institutions, corporates and governments through our four business divisions:

• Wealth Management
• Investment Management
• Wholesale (Global Markets and Investment Banking) and
• Banking

Nomura puts clients at the centre of everything we do and focuses on integrated global access.  We have a long history in Asia and we drive disciplined entrepreneurship.

Nomura pursues a strategy of delivering comprehensive services through a hybrid approach that combines people and digital capabilities. To provide truly optimal services for each individual client, we are proactively building a transformational IT capability. By leveraging technology and the latest trends, we deliver personal and appropriate end-to-end customer experiences.

Nomura is building its Architecture capability to help the business set direction and strategy by providing an enterprise horizontal view of technology; and reducing risk through Group unification of standards.

To deliver against this vision, we are looking for a collaborative leader with the spirit to make change happen and companion bold ideas that will continue to transform the experiences of our customers.

Role Purpose & Crucial Imperatives

Nomura have invested significantly in ServiceNow as a strategic platform for nearly a decade and have built a world-class ServiceNow instance utilising both out of the box capabilities and innovating well beyond the standard functionality.

Nomura is also undergoing significant expansion across the Nomura Group in multiple lines of business and ServiceNow capabilities.

The Senior Principal Architect for ServiceNow will work with Nomura’s IT and Architecture leadership to help define the ServiceNow platform vision and strategy whilst ensuring alignment to Nomura’s business strategy.

They will design overarching system blueprints, manage application portfolios, and ensure that platform workflows, data models, and integrations scale safely and efficiently across the entire enterprise.

They will serve as the technical authority for the ServiceNow platform, designing scalable architectures, governing platform integrity, and ensuring smooth integrations across modules like ITSM, ITOM, APM and HRSD to prevent technical debt.

Most immediately, the Senior Principal Architect for ServiceNow will be required to build on previous innovations to drive the next stage of the ServiceNow platform roadmap.

The following abilities are crucial imperatives for this role:

· Demonstrate thought leadership in supporting the CTO develop their strategy and be the driving force in developing a flexible and comprehensive ServiceNow architecture governance (covering business, application, data and technology) to adapt to changing customer needs that support the business’ strategy.

· Define and present the CTO Enterprise Architecture in various senior business and technology forums, ensuring the strategy and technology roadmaps are visible both internally within CTO and externally to other functions within the Group.

· Map strategic direction against the current state and work with the CTO technology leadership team to develop plans to modernise the estate against the vision, developing architecture governance policies, standards, procedures and methods necessary to implement the strategy within the Group Architecture framework.

· This role will define and maintain a holistic approach for ServiceNow across our enterprise strategy and deliver strategic insight, innovative and creative thinking that helps drive business growth.

Responsibilities

As the Senior Principal Architect for ServiceNow, you will have the following key responsibilities to fulfil the role purpose above:

• Platform Strategy: Define multi-year roadmaps and long-term vision for how the platform scales.  Evaluate new ServiceNow release features and platform upgrades for organizational adoption
• Architecture Blueprints: Own the architecture blueprints for the ServiceNow platform.
• Governance: Set instance governance, deployment standards and code promotion policies to ensure smooth system upgrades.
• Integration Design: Oversee how ServiceNow connects with other enterprise software and data sources. 
  • Design scalable, secure end-to-end solutions across multiple ServiceNow modules (ITSM, ITOM, CSM, HRSD).
  • Architect complex enterprise integrations using REST/SOAP APIs, MID Servers, and IntegrationHub.
• Application Portfolio: Evaluate application portfolio optimization and manage technical debt through ServiceNow’s APM.
• Stakeholder Alignment: Partner with stakeholders to provide architecture guidance and translate complex business needs into practical technical blueprints.
• Trusted Advisor: act as a trusted advisor to senior executives and business stakeholders.  Guide technical delivery teams, administrators, and developers on best practices.

Key Focus Areas

Common Service Data Model Framework: 

• Establish Governance and Ownership Assign data stewards, ownership groups, and RACI frameworks for every layer of the CSDM structure to maintain long-term data integrity.
• Guide Integration and Tooling: Ensure automated tools like ServiceNow Discovery, Service Mapping, and third-party asset integrations populate the correct CSDM domains without duplicating data.
• Enable Platform Scalability: Prepare the enterprise data foundation so downstream products—such as IT Service Management (ITSM), IT Operations Management (ITOM), and Security Operations—operate with full service context.

• Lifecycle Management: Decide when to invest, migrate, or retire applications on the platform.
• Best Practices: Guide development teams away from heavy custom scripting that harms performance

In addition, you will also need to:

· Define an agile technology architecture vision and strategy to enable CTO governance for ServiceNow platform.  Share best practice within the Group Chief Architect community.

· Support a CTO Design Authority that brings together senior leaders to make strategic decision, taking care to socialise non-functional designs and choices to the relevant Group governance group.

· Align CTO with the Group Architecture principles and standards.  Be an active member of the Architect community to help evolve Architecture best practice and embed these across the Technology landscape.

· Lead the development and implementation of CTO architecture strategy and standards, within the construct of the Group Architecture framework.

· Align CTO’s yearly technology change portfolio against the architecture vision and strategy; and shape transformation programmes and key principles required to undertake complex change.

· Reduce the cost of deploying change across the enterprise.

· Provide oversight and influence the development of platform and solution architectures and designs through governance ensuring that the target for architecture is implemented consistently across the CTO function and drive the realisation of strategy.   Manages trade-offs and balances functional, service quality and cost efficiency requirements as well as adherence to appropriate standards.

· Consult on new best practices, processes, operating model, techniques, products, services, technologies and standards where needed against identified use cases, via the appropriate governance bodies.

· Stay abreast of technology trends and advise CTO business/CIO/Chief Architects and the Business about potential benefits/impacts.

· Lead and drive operational excellence on the full architectural life cycle and provide guidance to development teams to ensure quality technical deliverables.

· The ability to interact with Architecture and Engineering practitioners to bridge the CTO strategy and programme execution is critical to the success of the role.

Our ideal candidate will be a proficient senior architecture leader that can demonstrate transformative influence, business value and real measurable impact at a business and technology level.  They should bring passion, imagination, a partnership approach and demonstrable experience for initiating and seeing through disruptive change, collaborating with agile development teams, and helping establish a strong DevOps culture.

Key Stakeholders

· Relevant executives within Technology

· Relevant executives within the business and partner organisations

· Technology leadership within Nomura Group, spanning the Group CIO, the CTO and the Group Chief Architect.

Demonstrate Leadership

· Deliver strategic leadership for a CTO Architecture ‘Discipline' whilst balancing a personal and authentic leadership style that should educate, inspire, motivate and mentor teams, creating a sense of community amongst the members of the technical areas.

· Explore Insights and Visions by comprehensively analysing the nature of the problems we face and set our focus toward the future vision by gathering intelligence; creating a vision and strategy; and identifying issues against the business strategy.

· Make strategic decisions by analysing options and feasibility to resolve issues, designing workable solutions to support medium to long term strategic goals; and demonstrate prompt and considered decision making.

· Deliver a highly effective leadership style across building effective stakeholder relationships and engagement across all teams.

· An excellent communicator at both executive level (business and technology) and at a technology practitioner level with the ability to translate strategies, planned and managed approaches, methods and tools and operational plans globally.

· Inspires Entrepreneurship in people by promoting a vision
and goals to others in such a way that inspires commitment and independent contributions.

· Strong commercial acumen, judgment and expertise across all aspects of area of responsibility.

Drive a culture of innovation, risk taking and collaboration, embedding innovation processes through the Wealth Management Architecture discipline.

· Demonstrates strong resilience and tenacity with highly effective influencing, persuading and negotiating skills. Accustomed to managing a high level of ambiguity and delivering clear decisions and direction

· Results-driven and relentless in achieving and exceeding business results, effectively exercising pragmatism when required, to deliver the right business outcomes.

· Elevate Organisational Capability by maximizing organizational
productivity through leadership development and engagement, supporting others growth.

· Embrace Inclusion by respecting diverse perspectives and
promote psychological safety and the creation of a risk culture

Management of Risk

Maintain awareness of architecture risks and operational risks.  Minimize the likelihood of these occurring through identification, assessment, mitigation and controls, loss identification and reporting in accordance with Nomura’s risk management policy.

Maintain and observe Nomura’s internal control standards, implement and observe Group Compliance Policy, including the timely implementation of recommendations made by internal/external auditors and external regulators.

Implement and observe architecture internal control standards, including the timely implementation of recommendations made by internal/external auditors. Foster a compliance culture and implement Information Technology Policy by managing architecture risks and diligently executing ratified the relevant architecture processes.

Desired Profile

Essential Qualifications & Skills:

· Deep experience of large business critical transactional systems in Financial Services, manging complex technology governance.

· Technical Mastery & Depth of the ServiceNow platform – must possess deep architectural knowledge across ServiceNow's major product workflows, moving far beyond basic IT Service Management (ITSM).

• Multi-Workflow Expertise: Proven design and delivery experience across ITOM (Discovery, Service Mapping), ITAM (Hardware/Software Asset Management), ITSM, HRSD, CSM, SPM and IRM
• Data Modelling & CSDM: Advanced understanding of data structures, relational databases, and absolute mastery of the Common Service Data Model (CSDM 5.0) to ensure a clean, structured CMDB.
• Enterprise Integration Patterns: Expertise in designing highly scalable, secure, and resilient asynchronous integrations using IntegrationHub, REST/SOAP APIs, MID Servers, and Kafka or corporate Enterprise Service Buses.
• Emerging Technology: Practical knowledge of embedding GenAI (Now Assist) and automation capabilities into legacy enterprise workflows

· Strategic Vision & Business Alignment

• Business-to-Technology Mapping: The ability to translate an executive business goal (e.g., "reduce operational cost by 20%") into a 3-year technological blueprint and platform roadmap.
• Out-of-the-Box (OOTB) Advocacy: A strict architectural mindset that prioritizes OOTB functionality over heavy customization to ensure smooth, low-cost platform upgrades.
• Value Tracking: Ability to establish KPIs that justify platform spend and demonstrate tangible ROI to C-level stakeholders.

· Governance, Risk & Quality Control – act as the ultimate guidance of instance health through:

• Technical Design Authority (TDA): Experience establishing and chairing a TDA or Centre of Excellence and Innovation (CoEI) to oversee code reviews, citizen development, and deployment standards.
• Instance Hygiene & SDLC Control: Setting the standards for Automated Test Frameworks (ATF), source control (Git integration), and structured update-set/pipeline orchestration.
• Domain Separation: Deep familiarity with designing architectural models for complex, multi-tenant global infrastructures or multi-national compliance boundaries.

· Leadership & Consulting "Soft" Skills – since majority of time will be spent communicating, executive presence is mandatory.

• C-Suite Advisory: Confidence to consult alongside Chief Information or Technology Officers (CIO/CTO), speaking fluently in business outcomes rather than code.
• Stakeholder Management: Must demonstrate partnership model of stakeholder management at all levels of an organisation.
• Workshop Facilitation: Ability to lead intense requirement-gathering workshops, align opposing business units, and negotiate complex technical decisions.
• Mentorship: A track record of upskilling junior developers, administrators, and solution architects to foster a strong internal ServiceNow practice

Preferred Experience:

• ServiceNow Certification Master Architect (CMA) preferred; or alternatively Certified Technical Architect, Certified System Administrator & Certified Application Developer
• TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework)
• ITIL v4 Master/Expert level
• Agile/Scrum or Prince2 certifications
• AWS Certified Solutions Architect
• Experience in both local and global teams, particularly dealing with Japanese stakeholders

· Experience in digital and broader architectural transformation, including AI transformation, applying solutions from experience in decomposing monolithic solutions and methods to manage technical legacy.

· Ability to understand, articulate and translate customer journeys into technical design, leveraging API and micro-service architecture techniques.

· Experience of Agile principles and processes and leading teams in agile at-scale methods using DevOps tools and processes.

· Understanding of and practical experience working with DevOps toolsets and frameworks.

· Understand channel applications and integration components, common digital and traditional integration technologies

· Identify key system architecture components, propose and help teams build solutions that unblock deployments.