Functional Architect - Talent Acquisiton Platforms at BP, Sunbury-on-Thames/London Canary Wharf, to 18/12/26, £Contract Rate

Job Title: Functional Architect – Talent Acquisition Platforms

Job Location: Sunbury-on-Thames / Canary Wharf (Hybrid)

Contract Length: Until 18th December 2026

Industry: Oil and Energy / HR Technology

Working Hours: 36.25 per week

Role Overview:

This role provides architectural leadership across the end-to-end Talent Acquisition and wider Talent technology stack, ensuring Workday and connected Talent platforms operate as a coherent, reusable and well-governed ecosystem aligned to enterprise standards.

The programme focuses on modernising the Talent Acquisition and Talent technology stack and operating model through Workday optimisation, connected point solutions, AI-enabled capabilities and digital automation, delivered as a coherent end-to-end experience.

Delivery is organised around a product- and squad-based agile model, with work structured across multiple, interdependent workstreams. Teams operate at the intersection of Talent Acquisition, HR Technology and IT, translating functional Talent outcomes into scalable, secure and compliant technology solutions.

The work involves close collaboration with Talent Acquisition leaders, HR stakeholders, IT delivery teams and external technology vendors. The successful candidate will have experience operating in complex IT delivery environments, with the ability to balance pace, quality, risk and enterprise governance.

This role requires experience delivering IT-led HR or Talent technology projects, such as system implementations, platform optimisation, AI-enabled solutions or automation initiatives.

What you will do:

• Own the target architecture for Talent Acquisition and wider Talent platforms across channels, integrations, data and user journeys.

• Design and govern end-to-end user journeys across candidate, recruiter, hiring manager and Talent operations experiences.

• Define integration and data architecture including APIs, events, file-based integrations and Workday integration approaches.

• Establish architecture principles, standards and reusable patterns to improve speed-to-deliver while reducing operational risk.

• Advise design authorities across Talent Acquisition initiatives, reviewing solution designs, vendor proposals and configuration changes.

• Ensure architecture decisions support security, privacy, auditability and compliance-by-design principles.

• Partner with Product Owners, UX and service design teams, engineering teams and vendors to align delivery priorities to architecture outcomes.

• Manage technical debt and avoid overlapping tooling or shadow processes across the Talent technology landscape.

What you will have:

• Proven experience as a Functional or Technical Architect across Talent technologies.

• Hands-on experience with Workday and connected Talent Acquisition or Talent platforms.

• Strong integration and data architecture capability including Workday APIs, RaaS, EIB, Studio and middleware patterns.

• Experience translating architectural decisions into intuitive end-to-end user experiences.

• Strong understanding of governance, security, privacy-by-design and enterprise architecture standards.

• Experience working within complex IT delivery environments and multi-vendor ecosystems.

• Strong stakeholder engagement and vendor orchestration capability.

• Experience supporting large-scale HR technology transformation programmes.

You will work with:

• You will work closely with Talent Acquisition leaders, HR stakeholders, Product Owners, engineering teams, UX and service design teams, enterprise IT teams and external technology vendors.

• You will support the delivery of a large-scale Talent Acquisition technology transformation programme operating across multiple agile squads and interconnected workstreams.