Information architect

Spark Trajectory Intranet and Digital Workplace Roles and Teams > This role

What does the role Information architect do?

The Information Architect designs and maintains the structural logic of the intranet or digital workplace: the taxonomy, navigation, labelling, and metadata frameworks that determine how content is organised and found. The role bridges user needs and content structure, working from research and analytics to create systems that are intuitive for employees and coherent for search and AI retrieval. Information architecture work is a prerequisite for effective enterprise search and a foundational input to AI knowledge governance.

Also known as

  • IA
  • Intranet architect
  • Information architecture specialist
  • Content architect
  • Digital architect (information)
  • Navigation designer
  • Taxonomy specialist
  • Site architect
Occasional prevalence

This role is sometimes found in larger organisations

Primary responsibilties

  • Designs and maintains the taxonomy, navigation, and labelling frameworks for the intranet and digital workplace
  • Conducts user research and card sorting to inform structural and navigational decisions
  • Defines metadata standards and controlled vocabularies that support findability and AI retrieval
  • Collaborates with content owners to map content to the right locations within the IA
  • Reviews and iterates the IA in response to analytics, search data, and user feedback
  • Advises on the structural implications of new content types, tools, or platform changes

Related teams

We've known this role to be part of the following teams:
Digital Workplace Team
Intranet Team

Skills profile

Note: This is what we documented as an exemplar. It's unlikely to always be the case and relates to a role's involvement with the delivery of digital employee experience and perhaps not everything they do. You can open this in the Skills Profile Builder if you want to customise it.

Apprentice

Limited but increasing capabilities based on learning and on-the-job experience, but guidance and mentoring is required to fulfil potential.

Practitioner

Good professional capabilities sufficient for many circumstances and roles. Able to guide and mentor apprentices.

Master

Abilities that are the best in the professional field, gained from significant experience. Able to teach and guide others in their development.
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Outline job description

The Information Architect designs the structural logic that determines how content on the intranet and digital workplace is organised and found: the taxonomy, navigation, labelling, and metadata frameworks that make the difference between a platform that works and one that frustrates. It's a role that bridges user needs and content structure, and one whose importance has grown considerably as AI retrieval tools depend on the same foundations to produce accurate answers.

About the role

You'll work from user research and analytics to create organisational systems that feel intuitive to employees and function coherently for search and AI. The role is design-oriented but evidence-based: card sorting, tree testing, and search analytics are your primary tools, and you'll be defining structures and standards that content owners, platform administrators, and search teams work within.

The role commonly sits in an Intranet Team reporting to the Intranet Manager, or in a Digital Workplace Team reporting to the Digital Workplace Manager. In a Digital Workplace Team the scope typically extends beyond the intranet to the broader platform ecosystem.

What you'll actually be doing

You'll be designing and evolving the taxonomy, navigation, and labelling systems for the platform, and then doing the governance work to make sure they hold up over time. That means conducting user research, reviewing search analytics, and working with content owners to map content to the right places in the structure. You'll also be advising on the structural implications of new content types, tools, or platform changes before they land rather than after.

A significant part of the job is translating IA principles into practical guidance that non-specialists can follow, and maintaining the standards that make the system coherent as the platform evolves.

What we're looking for

Practical experience designing and governing information architectures for large-scale intranets or digital workplace environments: not just drawing navigation diagrams, but understanding how taxonomy, metadata, and labelling interact with search relevance and AI retrieval. User research skills are essential: you should be able to design and run card sorts and tree tests yourself.

An understanding of how AI retrieval systems use metadata and content structure is increasingly central to the role.

Typical background

Most people in this role come from information science, library science, UX design, or digital workplace management. Formal IA training or certification is common. Enterprise intranet and search platform experience is normally required.

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Errors? Disagreements? Omissions?

We have hopefully created these exemplars with thought and care. It is not the only way of looking at these roles and teams in the world, and relates specifically to the intranet and digital workplance profession. It therefore concentrates on some things and ignores others.

If you find an error, disagree wholeheartly or feel there is a glaring ommission we'd love to know.

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License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Creative Commons License

Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.