Director, Solution Architecture (40001086)

Job Purpose

The job holder design, select technology solutions to meet actual business needs. Participating in the construction of system architecture, building and ensuring architectural standards in accordance with the business and development requirements of the bank.

Key Accountabilities (1)

Solution Architecture:
- Direct the team to gather functional requirements and specifications from current users to identify areas for improvement and/or integration for existing systems.
- Review and improve proposals for technology solutions, addressing current architectural constraints and future architectural improvements.
- Promote engineering best practices (e.g. test-driven development, continuous integration, and automated deployment).
- Take the lead in improving existing applications and creating new ones, while ensuring application software is efficiently designed, manufactured, tested, and met business requirements.
- Ensure solutions are designed in line with Technology's roadmap and strategic direction.

Key Accountabilities (2)

Customer-centric
- Responsible for making customer-centric decisions that have a profound impact on the utility and usability of systems that ensure user needs.
- Apply Design Thinking to collaborate with Product and Solution Management in ensuring that proposed solutions meet user, customer and market needs.

Project Management
- Manage project conflicts, challenges, and dynamic business requirements to keep operations running at peak performance.
- Work with team leaders to resolve people issues and project barriers, and do root cause analysis to help teams continuously improve their practices to ensure maximum productivity .
- Train, mentor, and help improve the efficiency of Agile teams, instead of directly specifying solution designs.

Key Accountabilities (3)

PEOPLE MANAGEMENT
- Oversee human resources planning and execution (headcount & costs) of their function/ sub- function
- Attract, onboard and retain the right talents for a high- performing team
- Establish and communicate sub- function/ function and individual KRAs/ KPIs, goals, action plan, expectations and results to reporting line
- Manage sub- function/ function performance & provide feedback regularly (following the annual performance management cycle)
- Define team’s capability requirements and enable team member’s professional and personal development through capability assessment, training, coaching & feedback, mentoring, etc.
- Motivate and recognize team members’ contributions towards the team’s shared goals
- Responsible for developing talents within the function/ sub- function
- Act as a role model and promote corporate culture at function/ sub- function level
- Understand & communicate relevant HR offerings to team members.

Success Profile - Qualification and Experiences

• 12+ years in technology / software architecture roles, with at least 5 years in a senior/lead architecture position.
• Proven leadership of architecture teams (15+ people); experience managing managers/leads preferred.
• Banking or financial services architecture experience (retail, corporate, or payments); familiarity with core banking, digital channels, and regulatory compliance (SBV or equivalent).
• Design governance: experience running or significantly contributing to an Architecture Review Board, Design Authority, or equivalent governance body.
• Enterprise-scale delivery: track record of delivering architecture for complex, multi-system programs in a large organisation (5,000+ IT staff or similar).
• Modern technology stack: deep hands-on background in at least 3 of: cloud-native (AWS/Azure/GCP), microservices, event-driven architecture, API platforms, data platforms, AI/ML, DevSecOps.