Head of Foundation Platforms

Head of Foundation Platforms

Because we strive to put people first.  
Culture, our way. 

Technology at Primark

What’s a career at Primark all about? The positive impact you’re making, the experiences you’re having and the people you’re with. You’re our inspiration. Embrace what sets you apart, own your career and develop in ways you never expected. Leave your mark. And do it your way.

Our technology team is actively shaping the next wave of advancements. Engaged with innovative initiatives, your expertise will propel our business into the future. Collaborating with a creative team of tech enthusiasts, you’ll contribute your unique skills to fuel our technological advancements.

What You’ll Get 

People are at the heart of what we do here, so it’s essential we provide you with the right environment to perform at your very best.  

Let’s talk lifestyle: Healthcare, pension, and potential bonus. 27 days of leave, plus bank holidays and if you want, you can buy 5 more. Because Primark is all about tailoring to you, we offer Tax Saver Tickets, fitness centre, and a subsidised cafeteria.  

This role is a hybrid opportunity, offering 1-2 days Working from home.

What You’ll Do as a Head of Foundation Platforms

In your role, you’ll collaborate with different people across a range of skillsets. Here’s a flavour of your day-to-day:  

• Strategy, Delivery & Architecture: Define and execute long‑term Foundational Platform strategy and roadmaps aligned to Primark’s growth; own end‑to‑end delivery of platform backlogs (Connectivity, Cloud, EUC, Digital Workplace, etc.); and oversee scalable, secure, resilient, high‑performing platform architectures aligned with product and enterprise architecture strategies.
• Business Enablement & Collaboration: Partner closely with Product, Engineering, Architecture, Cyber Security, Risk, other Platform teams, and third parties to prioritise and deliver platform initiatives that enable key business outcomes/OKRs, maximise technology investment, and build trusted, high‑impact working relationships.
• Service Health, Performance & Experience: Own overall service health and colleague experience across foundational platforms; continuously monitor, optimise, and improve reliability, performance, and scalability using best practices and proactive measures to meet evolving application and business needs.
• Security, Governance & Risk: Ensure platforms are secure by design with strong ownership of vulnerability remediation, patching, configuration standards, and security controls; establish and enforce platform engineering standards, policies, and compliance with regulatory and industry requirements; and proactively identify and mitigate platform-related risks.
• Technology, Innovation & Partners: Evaluate emerging technologies and industry trends in collaboration with product teams to drive innovation and differentiation; manage strategic partners and third-party providers, including contract negotiation, performance management, and service governance.
• People, Financial & Operational Management: Build and lead a high‑performing leadership team with strong engineering culture, capability development, and succession planning; drive financial governance across platforms including cost transparency, forecasting, optimisation and FinOps practices; maximise ROI and deliver cost efficiencies, especially for cloud and consumption‑based services.

What You’ll Bring  

Here at Primark, we want everyone to feel valued – so please bring your authentic self to work, of course with some other key experience and abilities for this role in particular: 

• Vision, Leadership & Governance: Ability to set direction, lead large multi‑disciplinary engineering and operations teams, and govern foundational technology domains including connectivity, cloud, EUC, and digital workplace in complex, enterprise-scale environments.
• Deep Technical Expertise: Strong hands-on and strategic technical capability across networks, hybrid/public cloud, endpoint management, collaboration platforms, and modern workplace technologies.
• Service Reliability & Operational Excellence: Proven ability to run stable, resilient services with strong command of SLAs, incident, problem, and change management processes, and a continuous improvement mindset.
• Modern Engineering & Delivery Approaches: Experience working effectively in product-led, agile, DevOps, and platform-engineering environments, with strong capability in cloud-native design, infrastructure-as-code, automation tooling, and modern engineering practices.
• Security, Architecture & Transformation: Ability to embed secure-by-design principles, identity-centric security, and Zero Trust concepts into foundational technology strategies, with a proven track record delivering large-scale initiatives such as cloud migrations, network modernisation, EUC transformations, or data centre consolidation.
• Commercial, Financial & Stakeholder Management: Experience owning and optimising budgets, managing strategic suppliers, driving cost efficiencies, and influencing senior stakeholders while balancing operational excellence and long-term value.

Does this sound like you? Great, because we can’t wait to see what you’ll bring. You’ll be supported within a team of equally capable people, celebrating who you are and aiding you reach your potential. At Primark, we’re excited about our future - and we’re excited to develop yours.  

About Primark 

At Primark, people matter. They’re the beating heart of our business and the reason we’ve grown from our first store in Dublin in 1969 to a £9bn+ turnover business and over 80,000 colleagues and over 440 stores in 17 countries today. Our values run through everything we do. In essence, we're Caring and always strive to put people first. We're also Dynamic, bravely pushing the boundaries to stay ahead. And finally, we succeed together.

Our fashion isn’t one-size-fits-all and neither is our culture. Primark promotes equal employment opportunity, we strive to create an inclusive workplace where people can be themselves, access opportunities and thrive together.