Enterprise Architect

Role Summary

The Enterprise Architect is tasked with defining, advancing, and governing the Group's target technology architecture while maintaining an active, hands-on role in designing solutions, reviewing implementations, and mentoring engineering teams. This role encompasses ownership of enterprise, solution, integration, and data architecture, alongside technology standards, API strategies, and architectural roadmaps. The objective is to ensure that the IT landscape supports operational resilience, scalability, and adaptability for future expansion.

The role requires alignment of all internal products and third-party platforms—including strategic vendor systems such as Fimple—with a modern, cloud-native, AI-centric architecture. The Enterprise Architect promotes advanced engineering and AI-aided architectural practices, using AI copilots, architecture modeling, code analysis, automated documentation, and design validation to accelerate delivery while upholding standards of scalability, security, resilience, and maintainability across the Finance House Group.

This senior leadership position remains deeply engaged with technology, collaborating with business and technology stakeholders, setting standards through governance, and establishing influence through real system design and review instead of abstract diagrams.

Key Areas of Responsibility

• Develop and maintain the Group's conceptual and target IT architectures and technology roadmaps in alignment with business and IT strategies to ensure system interoperability, stability, and long-term sustainability.
• Oversee enterprise, solution, integration, and data architectures as integrated entities, ensuring seamless interaction across domains and business units.
• Promote a cloud-native, AI-first architectural approach, continuously monitoring emerging technologies and industry benchmarks to keep the technology landscape competitive and modern.
• Identify and drive application and infrastructure consolidation opportunities to reduce costs, facilitate growth, and enhance operational efficiency throughout the Group.
• Directly engage in solution design and implementation reviews for in-house and vendor platforms, evaluating real designs, APIs, and code rather than only high-level diagrams.
• Provide expertise in cross-layer architectural patterns including microservices/SOA, OpenAPI, event-driven design, data modeling, security, and infrastructure to ensure solutions meet organizational needs.
• Manage the Group's API strategy and integration standards to guarantee consistent, secure, and well-governed interfaces both internally and with external partners.
• Govern architecture integration of strategic third-party vendor platforms to ensure they align with Group standards for scalability, security, and resilience.
• Mentor and develop enterprise architects, solution architects, technical leads, and engineering teams, enhancing the organization’s architectural maturity.
• Lead the adoption of AI-assisted architecture tools, including AI copilots, automated code analysis, documentation, and design validation, to accelerate delivery cycles without sacrificing quality.
• Integrate modern engineering practices such as API-first development, infrastructure-as-code, and automated governance into product delivery workflows, collaborating closely with platform and product teams.
• Engage actively with agile delivery teams to translate architectural vision into practical, incremental design solutions.
• Design, manage, and enforce enterprise architecture governance frameworks, including standards, templates, and business service catalogs, through design reviews and assessments.
• Ensure IT risk mitigation and data integrity by embedding security and resilience in architecture designs.
• Conduct comprehensive architecture assessments, impact analyses, and research to incorporate new business initiatives without compromising system stability or scalability.
• Collaborate with industry groups for benchmarking and validation of architecture blueprints and ensure effective external interface integration.
• Bridge business and technology divides by aligning IT architectures with business capabilities and strategic goals.
• Offer guidance for new business ventures by integrating necessary functionalities into existing IT landscapes.
• Interpret strategic plans into short-, medium-, and long-term architecture roadmaps and track delivery progress.

Qualifications and Knowledge

• A Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Systems, or a related discipline is required.
• Possession of TOGAF certification is mandatory; professional or architect-level cloud certifications in Azure and/or AWS are highly desirable.
• At least 12 years of IT experience within financial services, including progressive senior architecture or technical leadership roles designing and operating large-scale systems.
• A minimum of 8 years dedicated to developing enterprise architecture frameworks, standards, and principles.
• Demonstrated hands-on experience designing and implementing banking IT infrastructures, including real-time 24/7 processing systems and customer interaction technologies.
• Advanced experience with microservices architecture, OpenAPI, application integration, underlying infrastructure, and public cloud migration projects.
• Practical utilization of AI-assisted architecture and engineering tools alongside modern delivery methodologies.
• Experience collaborating with agile teams and leveraging open source technologies.
• Strong governance capabilities, stakeholder communication skills, and ability to lead through direct technical involvement.