Senior Manager, Solutions Architecture at KCB Bank Kenya

The Position: 

The holder of the role will be responsible of leading a team of solution & data architects and will be responsible for solution-level decisions and analysis of their impact on the overall business goals and outcomes. The holder of this position leverages their knowledge of available technologies to propose the best solution to address the business requirements within the context of existing technology environment. The key deliverable of this role is to provide specifications for technology solutions and the strategy for their implementation.

Key Responsibilities:

• Analyzing enterprise specifics - Facilitate the identification, analysis and consideration of the Bank’s business drivers, information needs, technical capability needs, architecture requirements & constraints for the delivery of future proof solutions to the enterprise.
• Analyzing and documenting requirements - Elicit business requirements through interviews, requirements workshops, surveys, site visits, business process descriptions, use cases, scenarios, business analysis, task and workflow analysis. 
• Setting the collaboration framework - Liaise with the Business subject matter experts in the development of clear roadmaps for Business solutions.
• Manage, lead and mentor Solution Architects in their day-to-day work deliverables and professional development
• Participating in technology selection - Participate in identifying fit for purpose technologies solutions for the Bank
• Analyzing the technology environment - Provide an analysis to determine best path for solving business problems/opportunities that may include process improvement vis a vis information technology systems enhancement.
• Controlling solution development - Participate in solution developments to ensure technical and business requirements are adhered to with minimal technical debt. 
• Supporting project management - Provide architectural oversight in projects ensuring that requirements are in alignment with business strategies and guard railed within the approved architecture roadmap/frameworks
• Leverage’s business capabilities as a platform for illustrating the link between business needs with decisions to their technology, solution, business and information architecture efforts
• Translates strategic initiatives into delivery-focused technology change initiatives, while translating business processes and issues into effective conceptual and logical models.
• Lead effort to work with business leaders to identify business capability needs and IT integration 
• Build and maintain repository for architecture deliverables, methodologies, frameworks, design patterns and decisions. 
• Ability to independently manage competing interests and requirements while leading stakeholders to objectively examine real needs versus wants and ways to collaborate to achieve win/win resolutions.

The Person:

For the above position, the successful applicant should have the following:

• BSc. Information Technology / Computer Science / Telecommunications / Engineering / (Electrical, Electronic) or related field
• Have a minimum of 10 years’ experience in Technology with at least 7 years’ experience in in at least two IT disciplines such as (business architecture, application architecture, application development, middleware, microservices and SOA).
• Exposure to multiple, diverse technologies, cloud and processing environments.
• Prior working experience in a leading formal enterprise architecture framework
• Excellent understanding of software delivery processes and methodologies (i.e. waterfall, agile, hybrid) & DevOps.
• Exceptional interpersonal skills, including teamwork, facilitation and negotiation.
• Excellent planning and organizational skills with ability to breakdown complex items to actionable elements.
• Knowledge of all components of holistic enterprise architecture.
• Familiarity with graphical modeling approaches, tools and model repositories.
• Ability to balance the long-term ("big picture") and short-term implications on individual components and projects.
• Ability to liaise with all levels of management and subject matter experts across the industry and within the organization to drive adoption of Business Architecture.
• Highly developed soft skills, such as listening, empathy, and the ability to adjust communication style based on the audience.
• Strong teamwork and facilitation skills.