Digital Platform Proposition Architect

Background

M&G Life is making important choices about how Sonata and other strategic platforms will support its future digital propositions for customers and advisers. We are looking for someone with the platform knowledge and commercial judgement to bring a clear, forward-looking view to those decisions, ensuring platform choices support our ambitions for digital experience and growth.

As part of a small Digital Architecture team, you will help develop how we approach platform decisions across M&G Life. The work reaches across propositions, with direct exposure to important choices before they become difficult or costly to change.

You will be joining a team that brings architecture, proposition, product, and design together around the digital experience. The role gives you scope to build a well-informed point of view, test it with experienced colleagues, and see it influence real proposition and platform decisions. For someone who enjoys making sense of difficult choices, learning across disciplines and helping others reach better decisions, it offers unusual breadth and the chance to establish a distinctive area of expertise.

Role Summary

As a Digital Platform Proposition Architect, you will bring platform expertise into the development of our digital propositions from the outset. Working across proposition, experience, operating model and technology, you will develop a clear view of where and how our core platforms should be used, what they can enable, and the choices needed to create propositions that can operate and scale effectively.

Sonata will be your immediate focus. You will advise on questions such as which needs should be met within the platform or elsewhere, what can be reused across propositions and when M&G should adopt standard platform capability rather than customise. Over time, the role will extend across other strategic platforms and the wider digital ecosystem.

You will work with colleagues across proposition, product, design and technology, as well as our platform partners, using your knowledge and judgement to provide informed recommendations, challenge constructively and influence direction.

You may have built this experience in platform or proposition consultancy, solution design, proposition or product strategy, a platform provider, systems integrator or a strategic business analysis role. Your current title matters less than your ability to understand how platforms enable a business, make sense of complex choices and communicate confidently across business and technology. This is a business-led role requiring strong platform and technology fluency, suited to someone who enjoys moving between strategic questions and the practical detail needed to make good decisions.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and communicate a forward-looking view of how Sonata and other core platforms should be used and how they should evolve across digital propositions, aligned to the wider Digital Experience strategy.
• Work as part of digital proposition development from its earliest stages, helping proposition, experience, operating model and platform capability come together before delivery commitments are made.
• Turn proposition and operating-model needs into clear choices about standard capability, configuration, customisation, integration and reuse.
• Apply learning across programmes and identify where platform capability, integrations and proven approaches can be reused.
• Provide informed recommendations and constructive challenge at investment, design and governance decision points, influencing direction through evidence, expertise and judgement.
• Develop a cross-platform view of how Sonata and other platforms work within the wider digital and data ecosystem, identifying the capabilities, dependencies and choices relevant to the future digital proposition strategy.
• Use knowledge of the Sonata roadmap, market practice and M&G’s future needs to influence platform choices and contribute to the strategic vendor relationship.

Core Competencies & Attributes

You will bring the following:

• An understanding of how customer and adviser needs, proposition design, digital experience and platform capability combine to create a viable proposition.
• The ability to structure ambiguous problems, weigh evidence and turn complexity into clear choices and recommendations.
• Sound commercial judgement, balancing value, cost, reuse, risk and future flexibility.
• Strong commercial, proposition and operating-model understanding, combined with the platform and technology fluency to challenge design, integration and vendor choices credibly.
• The ability to influence across business, technology and vendors through judgement, evidence and constructive challenge rather than formal authority.
• A view beyond an individual programme, identifying patterns, dependencies and opportunities across propositions.
• An understanding of how regulatory and market change, including Consumer Duty, affects proposition and platform choices.

Experience & KnowledgeEssential

• Experience applying proposition and architecture thinking to connect business needs with platform capability, gained through platform or proposition consultancy, solution design, proposition or product strategy, or a related strategic role.
• Strong practical knowledge of Sonata and how it is configured, integrated and used to support life and pensions propositions.
• Experience shaping the use of a core or SaaS platform across products, propositions or services, rather than solving only for one delivery at a time.
• A strong record of framing complex problems, assessing options and making pragmatic recommendations on standard capability, adaptation and reuse.
• Experience influencing decisions across business, product, technology and external platform or vendor partners.
• Experience of working in a regulated financial services environment, with an understanding of Consumer Duty or equivalent customer-outcome requirements.
• Clear written and verbal communication, with the confidence to work across specialist and senior stakeholder groups.

Desirable

• Experience gained within a platform provider, systems integrator or consultancy delivering life, pensions or wealth platforms.
• Knowledge of UK life, pensions and investment propositions across advised and direct channels.
• Experience influencing a strategic vendor relationship or product roadmap.
• Familiarity with digital delivery approaches.

Department and team: Digital Experience – Digital Architecture

Job level: Manager / Expert

Role reports to: Lead Digital Proposition Architect

Number of Direct Reports: 0

Location: Edinburgh or Stirling (Hybrid - working in the office 2 - 3 days per week)

What we offer

We’re dedicated to supporting your wellbeing and helping you thrive, both at work and beyond. Our benefits are designed to help you balance your professional and personal life**,** and financially plan for the future. Our UK benefits include:

• A valuable pension scheme of up to 18% (13% made up of employer contributions and 5% employee contributions).
• Access