With over 70 globally recognized brands, a workforce of more than 42,000 employees, and a retail footprint of 4,000+ stores across 15+ countries, Alshaya is one of the world’s largest international franchise retailers. As part of its ambitious growth strategy, Alshaya is undertaking a multi-year modernization of its business and IT landscape, moving towards next-generation applications and infrastructure.

To support this strategic evolution, we are seeking an experienced Principal Enterprise Architect Core Retail & Data to join the Enterprise Architecture team within Alshaya’s Customer & Technology division. Based in Dubai and reporting to the Head of Enterprise Architecture, this role is pivotal in providing architectural oversight and guidance across the entire application and technology landscape, ensuring alignment with both tactical and strategic business initiatives.

The Role

• A senior management role, leading and shaping Alshaya’s IT strategy to build a strong foundation for business execution.
• Responsible for architecture management of applications and technologies within the ERP and Order Management System (OMS) domains, covering all business stacks: Food, Non-Food, and Starbucks.
• Provide technical and functional leadership for IT transformation initiatives related to ERP and OMS, ensuring alignment with enterprise goals and operational excellence.
• Engage with senior business executives, IT business partners, and other EA team members to align change initiatives with long-term vision and strategy, integral to the overall IT demand management process.
• Provide domain-specific architecture stewardship, leading, maintaining, and leveraging the enterprise architecture across ERP, OMS, and Data domains.
• Provide architecture governance, guidance, policy, process, solution, and technology leadership for ERP and OMS domains, including:
  • Core Retail ERP platforms
  • Order Management Systems and their integration with inventory, fulfillment, and last-mile delivery
  • Integration with customer-facing platforms and financial systems
  • Data architecture across all divisions and support functions (master data, analytics, governance)
• Define EA roadmaps, principles, and guidelines for ERP, OMS, and Data, and ensure projects’ adherence to them.
• Manage and contribute to the definition and implementation of the overall EA strategy and framework.
• Define and mature EA processes, such as EA assurance, and lead their integration with other business and IT processes.
• Create high-level solution blueprints for business initiatives, enabling sound investment decisions and optimal use of existing IT assets.
• Contribute to solution roadmaps for projects during the architecture definition phase.
• Provide EA services and an “Architecture Centre of Excellence” capability to programs and projects.
• Collaborate with and guide IT change delivery, IT services, PMO, 3rd party SIs, software vendors, and technology services to ensure architectural consistency, alignment, and sustainability across the IT landscape.
• Lead, develop, maintain, and extend EA artifacts, presentations, system maps, and reference documentation, including managing internal and/or third-party resources as needed.

The Requirements

• Degree in Computer Science, IT Management, or a comparable technology/engineering discipline.
• 12+ years of relevant IT experience, preferably in ERP, OMS with at least 2–3 years in Enterprise Architecture.
• Certification in a popular EA framework (e.g., TOGAF, Zachman) is desirable.
• Experience implementing packaged ERP and OMS solutions from leading vendors (e.g., Oracle, SAP, IBM, Microsoft Dynamics).
• Strong understanding of data architecture, governance, and analytics platforms.
• Retail experience is highly desirable; client-side lead consulting/advisory experience is an advantage.
• Specialism in ERP and OMS domains, with a good understanding of other domains from a strategic standpoint.
• Familiarity with graphical modeling approaches, tools, and model repositories.
• Experience and comfort in presenting and facilitating at senior management levels.

Necessary Skills

• Highly customer-focused and collaborative, with excellent communication (written and verbal), documentation, and presentation skills.
• Passion and expertise to solve complex enterprise problems through simple and extensible designs.
• Strategic thinker and planner – able to anticipate requirements and issues, and plan accordingly.
• Experience and knowledge of cloud-enabled services/applications.
• Strong awareness of technology and IT vendor trends, directions, and roadmaps.
• Ability to balance short-term tactical decisions with long-term strategic thinking.
• Demonstrable leadership abilities in changing, ambiguous, and challenging situations.