Senior Specialist: Solutions Architect (x2) at The South African Revenue Service (SARS)

Job Purpose

• To provide expertise, advice and support in practice formulation and associated best practice improvement tactics, by creating IT solution architectures for specific projects, including articulating the architectural vision, conceptualizing and experimenting with alternative architectural approaches, creating models and components and interface specification documents, and validating the architecture against requirements and assumptions. To provide guidance of how an individual solution, or collection of solutions within a portfolio of solutions, must support future business requirements — via a number of design artefacts.

Education and Experience

Minimum Qualification & Experience Required

• Bachelor’s: Information Tech & Computer Science AND 8-10 years' experience in Solution Architecture environment, of which 3-4 years ideally at operational specialist level.

OR

• Senior Certificate (NQF 4) AND IT Qualification (s) / Certification (s), and 8-10 years’ experience in Solution Architecture environment AND additional requirements specified in Min Functional requirements, where applicable.

Alternative

• Senior Certificate (NQF 4) AND 15 years’ experience in Solution Architecture.

Minimum Functional Requirements

• At least 5 years’ experience in a Solution Architecture discipline.  Experience and knowledge Enterprise Architecture frameworks, Toolsets and MS Office.  Modelling and mapping technical skills. Knowledge of Enterprise Architecture Governance and Business Processes.

Job Outputs:

Process

• Applies knowledge of products, techniques and processes to provide expert advice to project teams regarding the design of major corporate systems.
• Apply concepts and theories to resolve problems to ensure adherence to approved architectural designs throughout the project life cycle.
• Ensure adherence to approved architectural designs throughout the project life cycle. Help define the roadmap for transformational projects.
• Ensure traceability of solution against project objectives and requirements.
• Establish the technical direction of strategic projects, defining the strategies necessary to fulfil the stated vision, and providing expert advice to project teams regarding the design of major corporate systems.
• High Level Solution Architecture designs in collaboration with domain architects per project or requirement, and present for approval by the architecture governance 
• Maps application capabilities to business capabilities to ensure the realisation of business solutions
• Own the solution which includes the business impact, feasibility, design, and support creation/updates of a detailed design.
• Participate in the evaluation processes during RFPs for given solutions to ensure the right selection of the solution.
• Provide architecture guidance and consultancy services during the development of solution per project, to ensure that development is in accordance with solution architecture, and address any deviation/s.
• Provide conceptual architecture designs for based on business requirements per project. 
• Provide technical, specialist expertise to help define the roadmap for transformational projects.
• Develop a single practice area in alignment with operational activity and procedural frameworks and ensure tactical implementation.
• Draw on own technical or professional expertise, knowledge & experience to identify & recommend tactical solutions to defined problems in practices.
• Integrate business information, compare, analyse & produce reports to identify trends, discrepancies & inconsistencies for decision making purposes.
• Analyse and make recommendations about improvements to specialist systems, procedures and associated area's practice.
• Contribute to the optimum utilisation of org. resources, advising on effective planning and development of area of specialisation resource plans.
• Optimise goal achievement through tactical strategy implementation and optimisation of practises, processes & systems across an internal value chain.
• Plan for value-added, continuous practice & system improvements to deliver on objectives to enhance tactical implementation and excellence.
• Proactively identify interconnected problems, determine its impact and use to develop best fit alternatives; best practice implementation solutions.
• Translate top down policy in relation to own practice area and communicate impact to relevant stakeholders.
• Recommend changes to optimise processes, systems, practice area and associated procedures and execute the implementation of change and innovation.
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Governance

• Develop and/or align governance and compliance policies for own practice area to identify and manage risk exposure liability.

People

• Provide specialist know-how, support, advice and practice thought leadership in area of expertise.
• Integrate new knowledge and transfer skills attained through formal and informal learning opportunities in the execution of your job.

Finance

• Implement and monitor financial control, management of costs and corporate governance in area of specialisation.
   

Client

• Participate in the specialist practice community and contribute positively to organisation knowledge management.
• Develop & ensure implementation of a practice that builds service delivery excellence & encourage others to provide exceptional stakeholder service.
• Provide authoritative, specialist expertise and advice to internal and external stakeholders.
   

Behavioural competencies

• Fairness and Transparency
• Analytical Thinking
• Accountability
• Conceptual Ability
• Honesty and Integrity 
• Trust
• Respect
• Problem Solving and Analysis
• Attention to Details
• Analytical Thinking
• Commitment to Continuous Learning
• Problem Solving and Analysis
• Building Sustainability
   

Technical competencies

• Customer Relationship Management
• Verbal Communication
• Functional Policies and Procedures
• Written Communication
• Business Knowledge
• Efficiency improvement
• Application Development and Maintenance
• IT Project Management
• IT Knowledge
• Computer Literacy

Compliance Competency

• GOC Confidential
• Enterprise Architecture (IT)