Enterprise Architect at Old Mutual South Africa

Job Description

• The Enterprise Architect (EA) is responsible for designing and overseeing the implementation of enterprise-wide business, information, data, application and technology architectures to ensure the organization's strategic goals and objectives are met. The EA will work closely with business and IT leaders, and other key stakeholders to understand their needs and propose business and technology solutions that enable the organization to meet its strategic objectives and optimize its processes and systems. The job requires complex thinking across all architectural domains, strategy work, business acumen, strong communication and analytical skills to ensure that the business has the appropriate IT and Business architecture to be successful.

Develop and maintain enterprise-wide business, information, integration, application, data and technology (BIDAT) architectures that supports the organization's strategic goals and objectives:

• Create and maintain a comprehensive enterprise architecture plans including as-is, transition and to-be architectures across each of the major architectural domains.
• Conduct regular reviews of the health and adequacy of existing architecture and make recommendations for changes or updates.
• Develop and implement processes to ensure that all new technology solutions are aligned with the enterprise architecture plans.

Collaborate with business leaders to understand their needs and develop technology solutions that optimize business processes and systems:

• Develop business architecture deliverables (business operating model, business process models, business capability model etc)
• Meet with business leaders to understand their requirements and challenges.
• Conduct assessments of current processes and systems to identify areas for improvement.
• Work with business leaders to develop technology solutions that address their needs and align with the enterprise architecture plan.

Lead a team of technology professionals to ensure the successful implementation of technology solutions:

• Assist technology leaders with the definition roles, competencies, skills and responsibilities for members of the technology team.
• Provide guidance and support to technology leader and team members as needed in specific technology issues or concerns.
• Review and recommend improvements to processes to ensure that technology solutions are implemented efficiently and effectively and are in alignment with designs, and technology standards.

Identify and evaluate emerging technologies and trends to identify opportunities for innovation and improvement:

• Stay up-to-date on emerging technologies and business and technology trends in the insurance industry.
• Conduct research and analysis to evaluate the potential impact of new technologies on the organization.
• Develop recommendations for how the organization can leverage new technologies to improve its processes and systems.

Ensure technology solutions are scalable, flexible, and secure, while also meeting regulatory requirements:

• Define and maintain technology standards and guidelines to ensure that all solutions meet required non-functional requirements, security and regulatory requirements.
• Work with IT and Information Security to ensure all patterns, guidance and technology capabilities are available to meet the security needs of the organisation and ensure that plans are in place to implement any new threats or vulnerabilities that the security teams have identified.
• Ensure that all technology solutions are scalable and flexible enough to meet the organization's changing needs.
• Develop and maintain technology standards and guidelines to ensure consistency across the organization:
• Define and document EA principles, policies, practices, standards and guidelines.
• Develop processes to ensure that all technology solutions adhere to these standards and guidelines.
• Conduct regular reviews to ensure that all technology solutions remain compliant with the standards and guidelines.
• Ensure that the organisation makes use of an appropriate Architecture tool and repository with appropriate underlying Architecture meta-models and frameworks.
• Ensure that the Architecture repository is populated with all the models/catalogues that are required to accurately depict the as-is architecture and can be used for model based solution analysis and design to convey the required changes to the architecture.

Provide technical guidance and support to other technology professionals within the organization:

• Serve as a subject matter expert on technology issues.
• Provide guidance and support to other technology professionals within the organization.
• Develop and deliver training programs to ensure that all technology professionals have the necessary skills to perform their jobs effectively.
• Develop and publish position papers and recommendations on the adoption of new technologies or design patterns to be used within the organization.
• Provide guidance and assistance to solutions architects in the development of project-based solutions or the implementation of new technologies to ensure solutions are aligned with the enterprise’s future-state architecture vision.
• Assist in developing and ensuring the analysis and design artefacts used by the solution architects are of an appropriate standard and are developed and maintained within the Architecture repository.
• Identify and socialize reuse and synergy opportunities across the enterprise.
• Identify and ensure plans are in place to reduce technical debt across the enterprise.
• Monitor the as-is architecture and the planned solution portfolio to identify opportunities to address misalignment between actual and planned (transition) architectures
• Quality people practices
• Align own behaviour with the organisation culture and values.
• Share and transfer product, process and systems knowledge to colleagues.
• Ensure achievement of own performance objectives.
• Actively share information with other team members regarding successes, issues, trends and ideas.
• Actively participate in own professional development and career path.
• Actively promote a culture of learning and high performance culture amongst team members.

Experience, Knowledge & Skills Required

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related bachelor’s degree.
• Masters Degree in Business Administration is advantageous.
• Over 10 years of experience in information technology, with at least 5 years of experience working as an enterprise architect.
• TOGAF Certified Architect
• Certified Cloud Architect (AWS/Azure) is advantageous
• Strong understanding of enterprise architecture and other domain frameworks such as Zachman, ArchiMate, DAMA, APQC etc
• Experience in leading technology teams and managing complex technology projects.
• Demonstrated experience developing and implementing enterprise-wide technology and application architectures.
• Strong understanding of cloud-based technologies and their implementation.
• Experience with Agile development methodologies.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

Closing Date

30 April 2023