Chief Architect

Bring your possibility to life Define your career with us
- With over 100 years of rich history and strongly positioned as a local bank with regional and international expertise, a career with our family offers the opportunity to be part of this exciting growth journey, to reset our future and shape our destiny as a proudly African group.Job Summary

Leverage deep and broad skills as well as understanding of the organization, leading industry practice and group strategy to shape the strategic architecture while providing strong leadership of the Design and Delivery of solutions across a large and diverse area comprised of several portfolios or a full business unit to achieve a large positive impact upon the organization, customers and colleagues (which will be felt well into the future).

**Job Description**:

- Leads the Group's architecture guild (though they may report into other line managers in an embedded technology model)
- Works with the CTO to define the architecture framework, processes and practices across the firm
- Lead key architecture/roadmap build initiatives which are generally cross-cutting and highly significant initiatives.
- Works collaboratively across multiple business units and functions to ensure that their architectures (current and future) are coherent, stable, scalable, modular and fit for purpose while delivering optimal customer and colleague experiences.
- Accomplished practitioner and teacher of several of the following: design thinking, evolutionary architectures, DevOps, robust engineering practices, data driven techniques and most-importantly customer centric practices. Able to teach others to use these to craft fit-for purpose and innovative solutions.
- Contributes to, co-evolves and co-curates Absa’s architecture principles and practices and ensures that all associated technology solutions & roadmaps are true to these.
- In collaboration with the CTO, explore new technologies & lead the technology innovation agenda for a specific business as it relates to our business strategy.
- Experienced solver of wicked problems under a cohesive and integrated approach which spans customers, colleagues, process & technology.
- Understand the existing architectural landscape & associated business and technology solutions and the degree of alignment with strategy.
- Craft solutions and roadmaps to evolve this landscape towards Absa’s strategic objectives in a commercially viable and efficient fashion.
- Work in a leadership role in the delivery of these solutions and roadmaps.
- Work in partnership with the CIOs, CTO, CSO and risk teams (where applicable)
- Chairs the group architecture council and is accountable for ensuring appropriate decisioning via that forum. Has a tie-breaker vote in GAC.
- Understand relevant Group initiatives and integrate these with the specific business strategic initiatives, complement them or challenge them where appropriate.
- Manage / oversee solution implementation & quality across Dev Teams e.g. cross business solution reviews, code reviews, testing etc.
- Assume one stop shop accountability for the efficient & effective solution delivery across businesses who are interdependent with & or dependent on delivery of your business area (by maintaining the principles above or ensuring provisioning with limited / no queuing)
- Use Data-driven techniques as a tool to drive business improvement which may entail defining data requirements, ensure data availability & monitor & leverage data & analytics to identify opportunities for improvement across the technology area for a business (customer, usage, performance, quality etc.)
- Ensure the appropriate resourcing (Right People, Right Fit Capabilities, Right Roles, Right Time) of all solution design & implementation teams (Run & Build) across the business
- Stay ahead of the curve on new technology & associated capabilities & leverage new found knowledge and skill to influence the architectural direction of the broader organization (bank) as well as the business with a focus on improving service delivery to customers & sustainable & profitable business operations for the organization. Scaled learning is a foundational principle of this.

Delivery management for business wide initiatives led by Architecture teams (where there is a specific product / service you manage)
- With fluency in the deployment of agile methodologies, resource & manage the appropriate number and nature (skill & capability) of squad-based teams to execute on both Run & Change elements of delivery
- Work in collaboration with transformation & change teams for effective resourcing and delivery management of various programmes at all levels (SI, BU etc.)
- Ensure agile practices are implemented and sustained for effective delivery to business e.g. RETRO’s etc.
- Positively & proactively manage product owner relationships
- Proactively engage with & partner CTO, CSO, SE, Risk and broader enablement functions to drive alignment & leadin