Enterprise Architect at Datacentrix

Purpose:

• The Enterprise Architect will be responsible for the translation of management’s business objectives and requirements into a comprehensive, detailed, and technical vision that will enable the successful construction, deployment and management of an integrated hardware and software solutions platform. The role will be responsible for establishing IT system specifications, and a determining an optimal sequence of implementation tasks. The Enterprise Architect serves as a bridge between the primary business stakeholders/executive team and the Company’s development teams (Data, Application, Infrastructure, Hardware, and Integration) and strives to identify and develop synergies across the development enterprise

Key Performance areas:

• Accountable for the reviewing, developing and maintain of the COMPANY’s IT architecture.
• Review and evaluate the current state of COMPANY’s architecture (‘as-is) to identify duplications, what is working, what is not working and measure the health of key business processes that are supported by the current architecture.
• Recommend and develop the future state (‘to-be’) architecture to ensure that a road map for the COMPANY to follow.
• Build the transition architecture to connect the current to the future state by creating an iterative roadmap to get to the desired state.
• Recommend and provide changes to the business in easily digestible iterative changes instead of a ‘big ban’ approach where everything needs to change at once.
• Provide a set of steps to move into the direction of the future state gradually and/or prioritise as per business need.
• Provide a test bed for new ideas that may not pan out - tried and tested with minimal business disruption and financial impact to the business.
• Work in liaison with business stakeholders to develop Business Architecture Roadmaps containing tactical and strategic initiatives to reach target business capabilities. Identify and resolve dependencies and impacts across the architecture landscape.
• Design solutions based on business requirements that align with Reference Architecture policies and standards.
• Provide expertise in designing solutions for custom requirements.
• Provide direction and management to ensure that enhancements and modifications to the system adhere to all System and Business Development Methodology and Quality of Service Standards to deliver a quality enhancement that meets business requirements.
• Collaborate with internal/external stakeholders and conduct stakeholder reviews of architecture roadmaps and designs.
• Determine Enterprise Architecture policy and standards definition and evolution and works with PMO to coordinate project pipeline management.
• Engage relevant peers from other disciplines or domains during implementation of Solution Architecture/Design.
• Evangelize and syndicate high-level Enterprise Architect strategy across the enterprise and to the Company’s key stakeholders

Accountable to build a defined life cycle around reviewing the future state COMPANY’s enterprise architecture/Ensure traceability of work done by creating a tool that aligns all components together to facilitate that:

• IT decisions are made consistently across the enterprise
• Facilitates traceability to the overall strategy of the organization
• Empowers the right IT decisions to be made
• Removes the conflict of interest in decision making
• Enables auditability and accountability of decision making
• Eases governance
• Provide progressive ideas for moving the COMPANY forward with more advanced concepts or architectures.
• Ensure governance by defining and establishing processes by which software and operating models are built.

Assist with change management so that the business can:

Adapt to the enterprise structure
Change perceptions in business
All resources in the business to develop their skills accordingly

• Ensure enterprise architecture review are done periodically to evaluate and address technology standards adherence
• Design and present Architecture concepts to various high-level committee structures, i.e., IT Steering Committee and Exco.
• Assist with user training for new implementations to ensure that support is provided to business.
• Interfaces with internal and external Clients to determine scope of work being performed and issue resolutions.
• Author Enterprise Architecture documents for specific projects/programs clearly articulating goals, constraints, and rationale for all architecturally significant decisions. Lead scoping and design sessions across cross-functional teams. Lead the process of determining technical infrastructure design. Consult with different groups to analyse and understand and achieve functional requirements, objectives, desired features, and overall user experience. Collaborate on technical reviews of applications to assess the quality of their solution.
• Perform application portfolio rationalization. Analyse, define, and document system architecture and design for data, workflow, security, hardware integration, operating system environment, interfaces with other systems, internal and external checks and controls, and outputs. Identify key components and requirements necessary to ensure that architecture of the integrated environment can reach maximum levels of availability, efficiency, scalability, and security.

Assist Enterprise Architects in socializing and syndicating policies and standards across Technology realms. Act as a champion to help all facets of the development enterprise (hardware, software, integration) to understand and adopt these standards and policies. Collaborate in Enterprise Architecture planning initiatives to arrive at:

• Current state architecture
• Client state architecture
• Roadmap
• Risks & constraints
• EA policy and standard definition

 Qualifications and experience:

• Bachelor’s Degree e.g., Computer Science, Bcom Information Technology
• 10 years’ experience in IT Governance, Enterprise Architect or Software Development role
• Experience within a DFI or Banking environment will be an added advantage.
• 5 years’ experience in an Enterprise/Solution Architect role
• TOGAF and Zachman certification an added advantage
• Familiar with the relevant Information Technology governance and legislative framework (such as COBIT, ITIL, TOGAF, SDLC, ASAP, SOA, Zachman
• Experience within Financial Services or related industry (at least 3 years direct experience preferred)
• Demonstrated Business Analysis/Data Mining experience
• Understanding of basic accounting and loan management
• Very Strong technical expertise and proven design skills with breadth of knowledge across architecture disciplines. 

Skills & Ability

• Dispute/conflict resolution skills
• Research skills coupled with excellent communication skills.
• Good relational skills (an ability to get along with different kinds of people in a professional environment)