Chief Information Officer — Digital Marketplace

The mandate

The marketplace has added physical collection and service locations to a digital model, but the information backbone still reflects separate channels. Store transactions, digital orders, seller settlements, inventory movements, refunds and service costs flow through overlapping applications and manual reconciliation. A customer journey may complete, yet finance cannot always attribute the full cost or liability without later adjustment. Teams compensate with extracts and local controls that make change slower and hide operational dependence on individual knowledge.

The Chief Information Officer will rebuild that foundation. The remit covers enterprise architecture, core applications, finance and settlement technology, inventory and order interfaces, workplace services, cloud and infrastructure, service management, technology risk and major delivery governance. Customer-facing product engineering remains with the relevant digital leader; information security retains independent specialist authority. The CIO is accountable for reliable enterprise services and the integrity of the operational records on which channel economics depend.

This planned replacement is not a licence for wholesale re-platforming. The board wants a sequenced plan that resolves material control, service and cost problems while preserving marketplace pace. The CIO must be willing to stabilise an existing component where replacement risk is greater than current constraint, and to retire newer technology when it duplicates capability without adoption.

Scope and operating context

Based onsite in London, the CIO will lead approximately 1,900 employees and material partners across the United Kingdom and a wider international region. Direct and matrix teams include architecture, applications, infrastructure, service operations, enterprise data interfaces, programme delivery and vendor management. Significant capacity is supplied through cloud, software and integration partners.

The estate supports seller onboarding, catalogue, order orchestration, inventory, store service, fulfilment, payments, settlement, refunds, customer care, finance, tax and people operations. Not every service belongs on one platform, but authoritative records and event ownership must be clear. The CIO will make explicit where a marketplace, store or finance system controls state and how disputes are reconciled.

Peak trading and financial close impose different but connected demands. A degraded settlement service can create seller cash and trust issues even if customer ordering continues. A delayed inventory feed can produce cancellations and later refunds. The operating model must classify services by consequence and provide recovery, monitoring and support accordingly.

First-year agenda

The first one hundred days will create a critical-service and cost baseline. The CIO will map applications, interfaces, records, vendors, incidents, control findings, technical debt and change commitments around representative store and digital journeys. They will quantify run cost, reconciliation effort, failure consequence, manual access and key-person dependency rather than rely on licence inventory alone.

The executive will then define a target architecture focused on order, inventory, seller and financial truth. Identity, product, seller, location, transaction and settlement records will have accountable sources and effective-dated interfaces. Common integration, observability, access and audit standards will be delivered through usable services. Exceptions will have business owners, costs and review dates.

Finance and seller settlement require early intervention. The CIO will work with the CFO and marketplace leaders to improve traceability from customer transaction through commission, fee, refund, chargeback, seller balance and ledger entry. Manual adjustments should be controlled, attributable and reduced at source. New commercial models may not scale until systems can represent their rights and cash flows accurately.

Store-service technology will be simplified around defined purposes such as collection, return, assisted order and customer remedy. Colleagues should not maintain separate tools simply because the order originated online. Device, identity, offline and support design must reflect the store environment. The CIO will avoid extending enterprise systems into customer-facing work where a lighter product service is more appropriate.

Delivery governance will be reset in parallel. Major programmes need business owners, adoption, total cost, service transition and old-system retirement. Vendors will provide knowledge transfer, portability and meaningful service evidence. By year-end, several high-risk reconciliations and interfaces should be resolved, selected applications retired and critical-service reliability improved measurably.

Leadership responsibilities

The CIO will run technology as an operating function with clear service ownership and financial accountability. Executive reporting will connect incidents and delivery to seller, customer, store and control outcomes. Technical complexity should inform decisions, not prevent leaders from understanding consequence and alternatives.

The executive will reshape internal capability. Architecture, service ownership, settlement knowledge, vendor governance and enterprise product management must be strong enough to exercise informed control. Commodity work can remain external, but accountability cannot. The CIO will assess leaders, strengthen succession and create career paths that reward simplification and reliable operation.

Partnership with product, finance, operations and risk leaders is essential. The CIO must challenge commercial launches whose operating records or controls are undefined, while technology teams must propose feasible staged alternatives. Material technology or cyber exposure will be escalated through the appropriate governance without suppression.

Measures of success

The executive committee will review critical-service availability, incident severity and recovery, change failure, reconciliation timeliness, settlement exceptions, access findings, vendor performance and run-versus-change cost. Simplification measures include retired applications and interfaces, reduced manual adjustments, technical-debt closure and savings removed from contracts or internal effort.

Business outcomes include clearer order and channel economics, faster seller settlement resolution, more reliable store service, improved inventory promise and fewer finance close adjustments. Adoption and colleague effort will be monitored. A project delivered on time but followed by spreadsheets or unstable support will not count as successful transformation.

Candidate profile

Candidates should bring 22–28 years of enterprise technology leadership in marketplaces, retail, payments, financial services or another high-volume transaction environment. They must have owned critical operational service and transformation across countries, with direct exposure to settlement, finance, order or inventory records.

The board will seek evidence of clarifying authoritative systems, resolving a material transaction-to-ledger reconciliation and simplifying store and digital applications without disrupting trade. Candidates should have governed major vendors while building strong internal architecture, product and service ownership. Experience through peak events and serious incidents is required.

The successful CIO will combine technical depth with financial and operational literacy. They must communicate with sellers, store leaders, engineers, finance and the board, and make careful choices under incomplete information. A record dominated by outsourcing or platform replacement without adoption and control outcomes will be insufficient.

Compensation and appointment terms

The expected base range is GBP 250,000–340,000, supported by annual incentive and long-term participation tied to reliable enterprise and marketplace outcomes. Final positioning will reflect relevant scale, technical scope and present arrangements. Relocation or responsible treatment of forfeited awards will be assessed individually.

Confidentiality

The marketplace is not identified because the role involves settlement controls, technology weaknesses and leadership succession. Detailed architecture and service information will be shared with shortlisted candidates after identity, conflict and confidentiality checks. Applications must exclude proprietary diagrams, security findings, seller records and control issues from another organisation.