Solution Architect Marketing

Role Description

As a Solution Architect Marketing, you will support one of the biggest online marketing operations in the world, helping provide customers with relevant information and experiences that match Booking.com’s reputation and expectations. Marketing activities are a major driver of commercial performance and customer experience across the business.

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