Head of Architecture

Company Profile NA Job Responsibilities Architectural Design & Strategy: Lead the architectural design and evolution of the bank's core banking platform, ensuring alignment with business objectives, regulatory requirements, and technology strategy. Develop and maintain architectural blueprints, roadmaps, and standards for core banking systems. Evaluate and recommend new core banking solutions, technologies, and vendors. Drive the adoption of modern architectural patterns (e.g., microservices, APIs, event-driven architecture) within the core banking domain. Solution Definition: Translate complex business requirements and user stories into detailed architectural designs, technical specifications, and integration patterns. Collaborate with Product Owners, Business Analysts, and other stakeholders to clarify requirements and ensure architectural feasibility. Define service contracts, data models, security protocols, and integration points for core banking services. Develop multiple solution options where relevant and propose most appropriate for the context Technical Leadership & Guidance: Provide architectural leadership and technical guidance to development teams, ensuring adherence to architectural principles and design patterns. Conduct architectural reviews, code reviews, and provide mentorship to engineers. Champion best practices in software engineering, security, performance, and scalability. Architect who is a pragmatic in building required processes, works with stakeholders in tuning the existing processes to enable the team in consistently delivering quality in alignment with organizational processes Team Leadership & Development: Play a lead role in hiring, onboarding, and mentoring a team of Domain Solution Architects (e.g., Lending Architect, Trade Architect). Build a culture of technical excellence, innovation, and collaborative problem-solving within the architecture community. Provide technical guidance and mentorship to architects and senior engineers, leading to successful delivery of core-banking transformation objectives, while ensuring architecture processes and principles are upheld. Integration & Ecosystem Management: Design and oversee the integration of the core banking system with various internal and external systems (e.g., payment gateways, CRM, risk management, data warehouses, regulatory reporting). Ensure robust integration management and secure data exchange between systems. Performance, Scalability & Resilience: Design solutions that meet stringent non-functional requirements for performance, scalability, high availability, disaster recovery, and operational resilience. Conduct performance analysis, capacity planning, and identify optimization opportunities. Risk & Compliance: Ensure all architectural designs and implementations comply with banking regulations, internal security policies, and industry standards. Identify and mitigate architectural risks. Innovation & Research: Stay abreast of emerging technologies, industry trends, and innovations in core banking systems, cloud computing, AI/ML, and open banking. Propose and champion innovative solutions to enhance the core banking platform. Job Requirements Proven experience as a Solution Architect for Core Banking Systems. Deep understanding of banking products and processes (e.g., Deposits, Loans, Payments, Trade Finance, Treasury, Customer Management, General Ledger). Strong understanding of architectural patterns and principles: Microservices, Event-Driven Architecture, API-First Design, Domain-Driven Design, Cloud-Native principles. Experience with integration technologies and patterns: REST APIs, SOAP, Kafka, MQ, ETL/ELT, API Gateways. Proficiency in cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and experience designing cloud-native or cloud-migrated solutions. Familiarity with data architecture principles: Data modeling, data governance, master data management (MDM), and data warehousing concepts. Solid understanding of cybersecurity principles and secure coding practices in a financial context. Excellent communication, presentation, and interpersonal skills with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to diverse audiences (technical and non-technical). Ability to work independently and collaboratively in a fast-paced, agile environment. Certifications in relevant architecture frameworks (e.g., TOGAF) or cloud platforms are a plus.