About the Team:
In Marketing we power one of the biggest online marketing operations in the world, providing our customers with relevant information and experiences that match Booking.com’s reputation and expectations. Our activities are a major driver of commercial performance and customer experience across the business.
Key Responsibilities and Duties:
Architecture Ownership
- Own the Marketing technical architecture: understand our capabilities, systems and their major dependencies, and maintain an up-to-date catalog
- Build trusted relationships with system and capability owners across Marketing and its key dependencies, acting as Marketing's technical representative in cross-functional discussions
- Monitor the architectural and operational health and maturity of the marketing technology landscape; proactively identify risks, gaps and improvement opportunities
- Participate in and guide architecture audits and budgeting processes, building funding cases grounded in data and linked to company and marketing strategy
- Organise and evolve Marketing's data structures and data workflows to support reliable, high-quality decision-making
- Ensure Marketing technology remains compliant with regulations and upholds the highest standards of customer data protection
Architecture Practice & Leadership
- Own and expand the architecture practice: raise the bar on design documentation quality and adoption, lead architectural reviews, and guide senior engineers on architectural concerns
- Lead by example - review important technical proposals and code contributions, apply and teach architectural best practices, and help engineers across Marketing grow their architectural thinking
- Facilitate regular presentations to share architectural knowledge and best practices with both internal and external audiences
Strategic Delivery
- Translate Marketing strategy into short, medium and long-term architectural projects; actively contribute to shaping the Marketing architecture north star
- Lead multiple architecture projects per year: design systems following company architectural frameworks, guide execution teams through informal leadership, and ensure initiatives are well-structured with clear descriptions, dependencies, risks and deadlines
Qualifications & Skills:
Required
- Proven technical leadership with a background in software development and hands-on experience in system design and software operations
- Strategic thinker with the ability to set direction over a multi-year horizon, translating ambiguous business challenges into well-defined technical projects and roadmaps
- Business mindset with clear understanding of how to use architecture to support business strategy and create value
- Demonstrated experience influencing and leading engineering teams and technical leadership without direct authority, driving alignment across a wide range of stakeholders
- Expert stakeholder management skills — able to navigate complex cross-departmental dynamics, build consensus and move initiatives forward across organisational boundaries
- Ability to work confidently with more senior stakeholders, several levels above.
- Ability to take decisions and kick-off execution even under situations of large complexity and uncertainty
- Highly organised and able to manage multiple concurrent projects, switching context effectively across a broad portfolio of systems and capabilities
- Proactive problem solver with a bias for action and a strong sense of ownership — you do what you say you will
- Cultivates deep organizational insight through active networking rather than relying solely on automated systems; builds strong rapport with diverse colleagues and establishes comprehensive technical context through a visible and engaging presence
- Solid understanding of agile delivery principles; able to validate hypotheses quickly and iterate with pace
- Experience with capacity planning, estimation and budgeting for technology initiatives
Good to have
- Experience with data management tooling and workflows
- A passion for documentation and organisational clarity
- Demonstrable experience of cloud technology (AWS or similar) and designing cloud native systems
Pre-Employment Screening
If your application is successful, your personal data may be used for a pre-employment screening check by a third party as permitted by applicable law. Depending on the vacancy and applicable law, a pre-employment screening may include employment history, education and other information (such as media information) that may be necessary for determining your qualifications and suitability for the position.