Senior Director Architecture Enterprise Applications & Financial Systems

About Booking Holdings Booking Holdings (NASDAQ: BKNG) is the world leader in online travel and services that support the entire travel journey. Our platforms - including Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda, KAYAK and OpenTable - utilize advanced AI, machine learning and other innovative technologies to simplify and personalize the travel experience for consumers and partners in over 220 countries and territories. Our mission is to make it easier for everyone to experience the world. For more information, visit BookingHoldings.com and follow us on X @BookingHoldings.

This role is eligible for our hybrid work model: Two days in-office.

Profile The Senior Director Architecture Enterprise Applications & Financial Systems is the Functional Head of Architecture, owning the long-term enterprise- wide applications technology strategy and architectural evolution for the entire global Finance ecosystem. This role moves beyond functional oversight to drive and own enterprise-level transformation, ensuring that the financial core is resilient, compliant, and capable of supporting multi-billion dollar growth.

The Senior Director leads the architectural function through a team of direct reports while providing matrixed leadership to engineering teams across the global brands. They are accountable for the financial ROI of the company’s financial core and hold final decision rights on the convergence of disparate financial technologies into a unified, scalable global platform.

Responsibilities:

• Senior and technical expert for Architecture, who is able to communicate with, perform at and engage with (Sr) Director/(S)VP level. He/She is a critical thinker, identifies systematic patterns and underlying issues in complex situations, and presents solutions based on logical, re-usable patterns based on best-industry practices for the senior leaders to understand and evaluate the cost & benefits of the various options.
• Senior technical/Functional expert for Architecture (Enterprise/Solution) who communicates, performs and engages effectively at the (Sr) Director and (S)VP levels. Demonstrates critical thinking by identifying systematic patterns and underlying issues in complex scenarios, and presents solutions built on logical, reusable patterns aligned with industry best practices, enabling senior leadership to evaluate the costs and benefits of various options.
• The individual shapes the architectural long term vision, strategy and technology roadmap for Financial Systems (FS) & Enterprise Applications (EApp), with both finance and payments domain dependencies, and ensures that conformance and compliance with architecture guidelines, standards, and practices are aligned with FinTech, the Finance wide strategy as well as cross-brand Finance domains and business objectives and caters for the strict regulated environment we operate within.
• Directs a central team of architects while providing functional leadership to matrixed engineering teams across all brands, establishing global best practices and architectural standards for enterprise application. Holds clear financial accountability for enterprise application technology portfolio, ensuring the architectural integrity and long-term ROI of multi-year, high-capital transformation programs.
• Owns the development of points of views on technology, industry and market trends, and determines their potential impact on Financial Systems and FinTech in general.
• Leads the identification and analysis of financial business drivers to derive business, information, technical and solution (BITS) architecture requirements.
• Advocates and supports the information data technology strategy for FinTech and derives the specific requirements for Financial Systems.
• The Senior Director exercises final decision rights on mandatory global enterprise application architectural standards, guidelines, and compliance frameworks to mitigate systemic financial risk and ensure SOX integrity.
• He/She will define and lead complex, business-critical or cross-company projects and address/resolve inter-program and inter-initiative challenges from an overall technology/architecture solution perspective. Although not acting as a project manager, the Senior Director Architecture is responsible to ensure that the expected outcome of the projects are in line with the agreed architecture guidelines, principles and financial boundaries that were set and agreed during the initial design, and communicates efficiently to all relevant stakeholders on the progress achieved.

Ideal Experience & Skills:

• Substantial years of experience as a senior solution architect or senior technical leader, in a large global company, leading the architecture function across the technology area.
• Strong stakeholder management and communication skills are must-haves. Experience gained from working in large, high volume transaction marketplaces is ideal.
• Comfortable in a highly ambiguous environment. Experience working in a multi-brand company is critical to the long-term success of this role.
• Experience leading matrixed architectural organizations in a global, publicly traded environment, managing through people by setting clear targets and effectively measuring progress, and coaching/influencing people in other parts of the organization not directly reporting to this role. Strategic mindset, with a strong tactical approach in execution. Worked in roles requiring setting and developing technology and business strategy for large global businesses, without becoming corporate.
• Experience with payments and/or financial services within a large company.
• Experience with and knowledge of SAP and its application is critical.
• Experience with and understanding online (CNP) payment processes, both cards as well as alternative methods (wallets, etc) is required.

Desired Outcome/Jobs To Be Done / Objectives:

• Strengthen architecture governance and decision velocity across Financial Systems and cross-brand programs.
• Improve quality and consistency of target-state architecture.
• Reduce architectural ambiguity and unresolved dependencies on the most complex initiatives.
• Help the organization shift from tactical workaround patterns toward cleaner, more scalable long-term designs.
• Raise confidence among senior stakeholders that architecture is accelerating delivery without compromising controls, compliance, or resilience.