Tarun Bulchandani
London, UK · British Citizen

Architecture leader building AI-native enterprise systems and large-scale transformation.

20+ years across SAP, Salesforce and cloud platforms. Currently Head of Architecture at Sonnedix. Earlier led EA governance at Aviva and global SAP S/4HANA architecture at Nestlé. TOGAF certified.

Available for senior architecture roles · London + UK/EMEA hybrid
Get in touch Download CV
Tarun Bulchandani
20+
Years in architecture
15+
Global enterprises served
$30M
Saved · Aviva rationalisation
CHF350M+
Programme · Nestlé S/4HANA
100+
Apps under guardrails
$100K+/yr
Saved · Meridian build
What I do

Three things I get hired for.

Architecture for regulated, global organisations. The work clusters around three archetypes — sometimes one role, sometimes a hybrid. The right one depends on what you need.

Architecture Governance

Build the function from zero.

Operating models, governance boards, ADR frameworks, standards, principles, vendor governance. I established Enterprise Architecture Governance at Aviva and built the full EA function at Sonnedix from zero. Chaired the global Architecture Governance Board at Nestlé. Comfortable with regulated environments and explicit control frameworks: DPIA, TRA, sanctions and counterparty due-diligence.

AI in the Enterprise

Make AI work in production.

RAG, agentic workflows, LLM orchestration over real enterprise data. At Sonnedix I architected and built Meridian, an internal AI-native EA platform on Next.js, PostgreSQL on Azure and Microsoft Entra ID, with a Gemini conversational assistant operating over portfolio context. AI governance, evals and guardrails treated as architecture concerns.

Large-Scale Transformation

Lead the architecture end-to-end.

SAP S/4HANA, Salesforce, customer platforms, integration architecture. Led architecture for Nestlé's CHF 350M+ global S/4HANA programme, Sonnedix's first end-to-end customer management platform on S/4HANA Public Cloud and Salesforce Energy & Utilities, and earlier $350M+ multi-platform programmes in UK energy and utilities.

Stack I work with

My story

Twenty years of building enterprise platforms.

From hands-on programming on a digital telephone exchange billing system to chairing global governance boards at one of the world's largest food companies. The throughline: take complex, regulated, multi-stakeholder environments and turn architecture into a control function that moves the business.

Sonnedix Jun 2023 – Present · London, UK
Head of Architecture
Built and established the Sonnedix Enterprise Architecture function from zero — operating model, charter, Architecture Governance Board, ADR framework, principles, reference architectures, governance forums and an architecture community of practice. Architected and personally built Meridian, Sonnedix's internal AI-native EA platform. Embedded compliance and risk-screening (DPIA, TRA, Dow Jones, Moody's) into the application and vendor onboarding workflow.
Noesys Ltd. Jan 2022 – Jun 2023 · London, UK
Senior Architect (independent, via my contracting company)
Independent architecture and advisory work through Noesys Ltd., my contracting umbrella. Headline engagement: senior architect at a global cybersecurity client (500,000+ organisations protected) leading the back-office IT Finance roadmap and a global Lead-to-Cash transformation Target Operating Model. Delivered Transfer Pricing automation on Longview, financial close automation on OneStream, and FX rate retrieval via Refinitiv API and Snowflake DWH. Led the cross-functional team across Salesforce, CPQ, MuleSoft, SAP, Anaplan, Pagero, Zuora Revenue, Zuora Subscription Billing and Snowflake. Steered RFP processes, vendor evaluations, and SAP ECC upgrade / S/4HANA brownfield-vs-greenfield assessments. Followed Solution, Security and Enterprise Architecture review governance; contributed to SOD and SOX compliance.
Aviva Jan 2019 – Jan 2022 · London, UK
Architecture Governance Lead
Set up and led the Enterprise Architecture Governance practice, with governance across all platforms and global insurance and financial-services markets. Established Enterprise Architecture principles, standards and policies covering technology, infrastructure, data and digital. Owned the global EA repository and managed the budget for tooling, portfolio management, modelling solutions and external research. Drove application estate rationalisation, retiring duplicate platforms and delivering an estimated $30M in cost savings over 3 years. Member of the Senior Leadership Team. Recognised as the top performer across the global Senior Leadership Team in year one, with formal and financial recognition.
Nestlé Apr 2015 – Dec 2018 · Vevey, Switzerland
Senior Enterprise Architect
Provided programme-level architectural direction across major transformations within the Architecture, Strategy and Innovation division. Chaired and ran global Architecture Review Meetings and the Architecture Review Board. Led architecture on the largest ERP programme in Nestlé's 150-year history, a CHF 350M+ multi-region, multi-tenant transformation consolidating supply chain, finance and commercial systems globally into three SAP ERP global instances as Nestlé's business backbone. Worked across a programme team of 100+ resources and multiple systems integrators (on and offshore), with partial resource-management responsibilities including timesheet sign-off and spend tracking. Executed an S/4HANA feasibility study with SAP as consulting partner and left Nestlé with a solid roadmap for next-generation finance and supply chain.
Bluefin Solutions Sep 2013 – Feb 2015 · London, UK
Technical Architecture Design Lead
Led delivery of cost-effective enterprise solutions across datacentre, server, desktop, storage, networking and security. Led technical teams on multiple SAP ECC, SAP Solution Manager, SAP BW/4HANA and SAP HANA projects. Provided financial modelling for project (Transition, Transformation) and operational (managed service) costs over contract periods, communicated to both technical and board-level decision-makers.
Earlier career Pre-2013 · since 1995
13 years SAP-focused plus 5 years general IT, since 1995. Includes a £400M+ multi-platform programme at British Gas / Centrica spanning SAP, billing and customer systems. Programming roots include designing and building a full lifecycle billing system for a digital telephone exchange using Agile DevOps methodology, covering systems architecture, data design and application development end-to-end.
What I build

Selected projects.

Things I've designed, built or chaired. Some are platforms I personally coded; others are governance functions, capability models or transformation programmes I led end-to-end.

AI Platform Hands-on In Production

Meridian: Internal AI-Native EA Platform

A case study in replacing a stack of licensed enterprise SaaS with one custom-built, AI-native platform — architected, designed and personally built end-to-end. Stack: Next.js 15, TypeScript, FastAPI for integration and security, PostgreSQL on Azure, Prisma, Microsoft Entra ID SSO, Vercel AI SDK with Google Gemini, Docker on Azure App Service. Consolidated three licensed enterprise systems — an EA repository, a PMO and portfolio-management tool, and a compliance tracker — plus a thicket of manual capability and compliance spreadsheets into one query-able platform with a conversational AI assistant operating over the full portfolio context. Includes a built-in approval workflow that routes every new application and vendor through DPIA, technical risk assessment, sanctions screening and architecture governance sign-off with a complete audit trail. Single source of truth for application portfolio, capability model, PMO initiatives, value streams and governance.

~$170K/yr in licence + admin savings at steady state · full approval workflow built in · Read the case study →
AI-Native Build Personal Project In Production

Springboard — AI-Native Job-Search Platform

Built solo, ~15K LOC, one engineer. A Next.js 15 + Drizzle + Supabase cockpit plus a fleet of GitHub Actions cron workers that monitors ~1,400 companies, evaluates ~50 roles a week against a six-block rubric, generates tailored CVs + cover letters + interview-prep, and auto-fills applications across four interchangeable plans (Playwright DOM-fill, Gemini computer-use, Claude side-panel, local headed). Multi-tier model routing across Gemini 2.5 Pro, Gemini Flash, and Anthropic Sonnet; prompt-cache discipline; step-wise worker progress; bucket-based polling cadence; soft-delete with audit trail. Stops one click short of Submit — every application is human-approved.

~$4/mo total LLM + infra · 4 ATS auto-apply plans · Read the case study →
AI Agent Regulatory Integration In Production

Regulatory-to-ERP AI Agent

Production AI agent that automates monthly ingestion of regulatory invoice data from a national markets and competition regulator into SAP for accounting reconciliation. Eliminates manual download cycles for the finance team and provides an auditable trail of every fetch — tested end-to-end across a 3-month historical pull and now running live.

Monthly regulator data → SAP, fully automated
Governance Delivered

Aviva Global EA Governance Function

Built and led global EA governance across regulated insurance and financial-services markets. Defined standards, policies and architecture review forums under heavy regulatory scrutiny.

$30M saved over 3 years
Governance Board Chaired

Nestlé Global Architecture Governance Board

Chaired and ran AGB sessions for Nestlé's SAP S/4HANA transformation, driving cross-region alignment and decision rights across multi-region operating models.

CHF 350M+ programme
EA Function Live

Sonnedix EA Function

Built the function from zero: operating model, Architecture Governance Board, ADR framework, principles, reference standards and architectural guardrails.

100+ apps under guardrails
Compliance In Production

CANVAS: Application & Vendor Approval Workflow

The Central Application aNd Vendor Approval System — designed, named and built. Governed approval pipeline routing every new application and vendor through IT, Security, Legal and Commercial review with embedded DPIA, technical risk assessment, sanctions/PEP screening and counterparty due-diligence, and architecture governance sign-off. Nuxt 3 + Flask + PostgreSQL + Microsoft Entra ID + Azure OpenAI, with an append-only audit log and single-use SLT email approval tokens. Originally a standalone product, now folded into Meridian as a first-class surface.

10-step workflow · append-only audit log · AI-generated memos · Read the case study →
Customer Platform Delivered

Sonnedix Customer Management Platform

First end-to-end customer platform integrating SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud with Salesforce Energy & Utilities CRM. Defined enterprise integration, event-driven data and process architecture.

Meter-to-Cash · Customer Management
Programming roots End-to-end Sole developer

Digital Telephone Exchange Billing System

Where it started. Designed, built and operated the full-lifecycle billing platform for a digital telephone exchange end-to-end as lead architect, designer and sole developer. Streamed Call Detail Records (CDRs) from the exchange into a rating and tariff engine (peak / off-peak, time-banded, domestic and international rates); maintained customer accounts and subscriptions; ran scheduled billing cycles plus on-demand billing for ad-hoc and itemised statements; generated and printed bills; provided performance analysis, integration and production support; and set up and tested disaster-recovery scenarios. Eventually rolled out to three telephone exchanges as independent on-site instances, each with its own data store and scheduled backup regime. Specified and stood up the on-premises infrastructure end-to-end at every site — servers, networking, and modems for inter-site connectivity. Iterative greenfield build, owned end-to-end from design through long-term operations.

Lead architect · Designer · Sole developer · 3 sites in production
Skills & stack

What I work with.

Governance & Compliance

TOGAF, Architecture Review Boards, Architecture Governance Boards, ADR-based decision records, design authorities, DPIA, Transfer Risk Assessment (TRA), sanctions/PEP/adverse-media screening (Dow Jones Risk & Compliance), counterparty due-diligence (Moody's), regulated FS & insurance environments.

AI & LLM

GenAI / LLM architecture, RAG, agentic systems, semantic data models, knowledge graphs, prompt engineering, model evaluation and guardrails, vector databases and embeddings. Model selection across OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini and open-source LLMs.

Enterprise Platforms

SAP S/4HANA ERP (Public Cloud and ECC), Salesforce CRM (Energy & Utilities, Sales & Service Cloud), Snowflake, Palantir.

Cloud, Web & Code

AWS, Microsoft Azure, multi-region and multi-tenant cloud design, distributed and event-driven systems. Next.js, React, Node.js, TypeScript, REST and GraphQL APIs, Docker, PostgreSQL, Prisma. Microsoft Entra ID SSO.

EA & Portfolio Tooling

Planview Enterprise One, Ardoq, LeanIX, Avolution ABACUS, Jira, Confluence, custom-built EA tooling (Meridian, CANVAS), portfolio rationalisation methods.

Vendor Ecosystem

SAP, Salesforce, Palantir, hyperscale cloud providers and system integrators across vendor strategy, commercial negotiation and licensing.

Education & certifications

Background.

Education

  • IMD Business School · 2016
    Digital Business Models · Global Center for Digital Business Transformation
  • GLS Institute of Information Technology · 1999–2001
    Post Graduate Programme in Information Technology
  • Tolani College of Commerce · 1996–1999
    Bachelor's degree · Foreign Trade Practices & Procedures

Certifications

  • TOGAF 9 Certified (Level 1 & 2) · The Open Group
  • LeanIX Continuous Transformation Platform Practitioner
  • SAP Certified Technology Associate (OS/DB Migration, NetWeaver 7.30)
  • AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
  • Microsoft Azure Fundamentals
  • VMware Certified Associate · Cloud (VCA-Cloud)
  • PRINCE2 Foundation · APMG-International
  • ITIL Foundation · BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT
Download CV

Pick the version that fits the role.

Three CV variants tailored to different role profiles. All ATS-clean, A4 format, two pages.

AI Architect

For AI-native architecture roles

Leads with GenAI, RAG, agentic systems, LLM orchestration and the Meridian build. Best for Head of AI Architecture, Applied AI, AI Solutions Architect roles.

↓ Download PDF Chief Architect

For transformation leadership roles

Leads with EA-from-zero, capability modelling, vendor strategy and large-scale transformation. Best for Chief Architect, Head of Enterprise Architecture roles.

↓ Download PDF Governance

For architecture governance roles

Leads with Aviva governance, Nestlé AGB chairing and Sonnedix EA function. Best for Head of Architecture Governance, ARB Chair, EA Standards & Policy roles.

↓ Download PDF

Looking for senior architecture leadership in London or UK/EMEA?

British citizen, no sponsorship required. Open to permanent or fixed-term roles. Happy to chat about Chief Architect, Head of Enterprise Architecture, Head of AI Architecture, or Architecture Governance positions.

tarun.bulchandani@outlook.com LinkedIn