Senior Enterprise Architect - Sandton at Blue Label Telecoms

JOB PURPOSE

Responsible for the entire Organisation’s Enterprise strategy framework implementation, analysis, design, and integration of an organization's complete information resources, including infrastructure, applications, and data. An enterprise architecture (EA) is a conceptual blueprint that defines the structure and operation of organizations. The intent of enterprise architecture is to determine how an organization can effectively achieve its current and future objectives.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Team Management

• Provide visionary leadership across the group, fostering a collaborative and innovative culture
• Engage with various leaders such as Executives across business to find solutions and create better enterprise frameworks
• Mentor and coach, the solution architects, promoting professional growth and skill enhancement
• Efficiently allocate team resources to optimize workflow and meet project deadlines
• Conduct regular performance assessments, offering constructive feedback and implementing improvement plans as needed
• Collaborate with HR to identify and attract top talent for the Solution architecture team
• Lead the entire Enterprise architecture models within the business, ensuring a seamless integration of processes within organization
• Proactively address conflicts within the team, promoting a positive and collaborative work environment
• Implement effective conflict resolution strategies to maintain a cohesive and motivated team
• Facilitate regular knowledge-sharing sessions to ensure best practices are disseminated and adopted
• Encourage a culture of continuous learning and improvement

Strategy Formation and Implementation

• Collaborate with key stakeholders to Develop, define, and refine the Enterprise and solution architect strategy aligned with overall business objectives
• Stay abreast of industry trends and emerging technologies to inform the evolution of Enterprise architecture
• Develop detailed implementation plans for Enterprise Architecture initiatives, considering timelines, resource requirements, and potential challenges
• Ensure alignment of solution architecture initiatives with the organization's strategic goals
• Establish metrics and KPIs and department objectives to measure the effectiveness of solution architecture processes
• Continuously assess and refine strategies based on performance data and industry developments

Enterprise Application Portfolio

• Create a strategy model that works for the group’s entire Enterprise architect through designing better infrastructure frameworks that enables business to compete with industry related markets
• The EA ensures that the application portfolio evolves at an appropriate rate and does not become unviable as the other related architectures change
• The EA also provides the reusable standards, guidelines, patterns, and frameworks to application development projects, including those related to application architecture
• Make sure that all aspects of the application solution architecture are optimized (as much as possible given other constraints of time and budget) by working with subject matter experts (SMEs) in the areas of technology, information and application architectures and disciplines
• The application architect is the SME focused on designing application interfaces and software services to maximize reuse based on the business processes and governance rules for sharing

Enterprise Architect Support

• Limit choices available during development by choosing a standard way of pursuing application development creating, defining, or choosing an application framework for the application
• Recognize potential reuse in the organization or in the application by observing and understanding the broader system environment creating the component design having knowledge of other applications in the organization
• Subdivide a complex application, during the design phase, into smaller, more manageable pieces
• Grasp the functions of each component within the application
• Understand the interactions and dependencies among components
• Communicate these concepts to developers
• Review, develop and maintain the organization’s IT architecture
• Review and evaluate the current state of the organization’s architecture (‘as-is) in order 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• Accountable to build a defined life cycle around reviewing the future state enterprise architecture

Customer Centricity

• Coordinates contact with Business Partners as needed to assist with support activities
• Establish and maintain a positive professional relationship with Business Partners and customers
• Maintain regular and timely communications with Business Partners and customers
• Maintain strong working relationship with customers and Business Partners
• Work with customers and Business Partners to execute consistent service processes throughout the organization 
• Establish a single point of contact for issue resolution and change management
• Drive customer centricity in levels of the organization

Work Collaboratively

• Build a culture of integrity, respect and understanding across the organisation
• Recognise outcomes which resulted from effective collaboration between teams
• Build co-operation and overcome barriers to information sharing, communication, and collaboration across the organisation
• Facilitate opportunities to engage and collaborate with external stakeholders (Retailers and POS Companies) to develop joint solutions
• Demonstrate ability to work and engage with various teams
• Demonstrate ability to communicate at all levels

Budgeting, Policies and Procedures Development

• Collaborate with finance executives, and relevant stakeholders to develop and manage the DevOps budget
• Ensure efficient use of resources and adherence to financial guidelines
• Develop and enforce DevOps policies and procedures to ensure consistency and compliance within the business
• Regularly review and update policies to align with industry best practices and organizational needs

Requirements:

BEHAVIOURAL COMPETENCIES

• Tech Savvy
• Attention to detail.
• Customer focused.
• Evaluating problems
• Processing details and information
• Building relationships & Trust
• Communicating information
• Providing leadership
• Showing resilience
• Learning ability
• Stress tolerance
• Conflict Management
• Time Management
• Assertive
• Analytical
• Tenacity           
• Achieves Results
• Entrepreneurial Orientation

EDUCATION

• Matric
• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information Systems
• Equivalent experience required TOGAF certification

EXPERIENCE

• 8+ years’ experience in an Enterprise Architect
• 10+ years’ experience Solution Architect role
• Knowledge of the relevant Information Technology governance and legislative framework (such as COBIT, ITIL, TOGAF, SDLC, ASAP, SOA)
• Strong Microsoft Office productivity tools knowledge (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook)
• Atlassian and Jira knowledge (advantageous)