Chief Enterprise Architect at Growth in Value Alliance (GV Alliance) Partners

Growth in Value Alliance (GV Alliance) Partners – Our client, a Financial Institution in Lagos Nigeria, is seeking to employ suitably qualified candidate to fill the vacant position below:

Job Title: Chief Enterprise Architect

Location: Lagos

Job Descriptions

The Chief Enterprise Architect (CEA) has overall responsibility and ownership for the design and implementation of Client’s enterprise architecture and associated strategy.
A key objective with the enterprise architecture is to drive simplification and standardisation across the application and infrastructure portfolio.
The enterprise architecture will also function as the vision of a target state architecture that enables Client’s business growth strategy.
This position is responsible for the technical and architectural aspects of enterprise wide business decisions including the strategy and planning for applications, infrastructure, network, security, and data architecture. This includes the establishment of a governance process which ensures adherence to these architectures and enables the organization to make informed business decisions when choosing solutions and technologies.
The CEA must possess extensive experience from information industry and financial services with large numbers of users, including experience with major technology development environments, architecture design and implementation, and large systems integration. Industry standards, including service-oriented architecture (SOA) approaches, will be utilized to integrate components and systems as well as preserve current and future technology investment.
The CEA’s responsibilities include the continuing digitization of our current IT infrastructure, optimizing business operations, and setting the direction and approach for integrating information applications and programs. The Enterprise Architect will also be responsible for cataloguing, developing, coordinating, communicating, maintaining, and enforcing overall enterprise architecture models, representations, initiatives, capabilities, and components to adequately perform the organization’s business and technology activities.
The CEA must exhibit excellent technical, analytical, and project management skills. They should also have strong leadership, communication, and interpersonal skills.

Essential Functions

Establishes an architect capability within the IT department including an enterprise architecture group reporting into the CTO, and a domain architecture layer owned by solutions architects in the software engineering team.
Establishes an enterprise architecture encompassing:
- Application architecture
- Application platform architecture
- Content and data architecture
- Infrastructure architecture
- Architectural governance
Establishes a capability to monitor competitor’s activities as it relates to technology, technology adoption, partnerships etc.
Establishes the capabilities to stay up to date on new technology developments in the general global marketplace.
Actively contributes to increasing the exposure within the institution to new ideas, ways to leverage technology and new trends in the technology market to foster innovation.
Develops a technology strategy, organization supporting transformation initiatives, and the development and deployment of companywide enterprise architectures.
Suggesting ideas to reduce costs in IT and business leadership.
Organizing training to improve employees’ knowledge and skills for future organizational growth.
Conducting research in talent management to improve the organization’s business operations.
Identifies and drives opportunities to simplify and leverage the existing tools / assets and resources across IT.
Develops and fosters a culture of technical excellence and innovation across the business.
Researches and plans the appropriate technologies and solutions to meet changing business directives.
Identifies commonalities between businesses and develops an action plan to guide management and peers toward one architecture vision.
Performs other duties as assigned.

Work Environment and Physical Demands:

Client office environment in Lagos, Nigeria
Occasional travel to the bank’s branch and operational locations.

Required Experience

A Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology or related field.
Minimum 7 years’ experience in system architecture in a multi-entity, complex, and distributed environment required. Ideally this will have been in a financial institution.
TOGAF 9 Certification
ITIL Foundation Certification at a minimum, Strategic Leader (SL) preferred.
Technology consulting and proven project management experience preferred.
Experience with architecture technology as part of the revenue stream and product offering, and not part of internal systems preferred.
Experience with dev-ops and the automation of testing builds and deployment is preferred.

Required Skills:

A strong, pragmatic approach to leading architecture and development solutions, with a proven record in technology strategy planning and delivery.
Experience with the development, ownership, and successful delivery of an enterprise wide technology architecture plan that has achieved application simplification and standardization.
Be comfortable building systems architecture artefacts using modelling and being able to effectively communicate architectural intention to delivery teams for execution.
Strong / expert level technology skills and understandings.
The ability to prove the value of the function to the organization, make it meaningful and accountable; and as a result, use it to influence decisions.
Ability to communicate technical information effectively and efficiently to both technical and non-technical management and staff.
An expert-level technologist and architect with a passion and enthusiasm for technology
Demonstrated ability to work individually and build the enterprise architecture function from scratch.
Strong organizational, interpersonal, and very effective time management skills. Proven ability to influence people indirectly, work with people in multi-functional roles, and success in being a driver of change
Able to manage towards both short term goals and long-term goals. Project management and process experience including the ability to accurately estimate resources, timeframe, and budgets needed for projects and deliverables
Experience with the development, ownership, and successful delivery of an enterprise wide technology architecture plan that has achieved application simplification and standardization.