Solutions Architect at Safaricom Kenya

Reporting to the Product Owner, the role will be the liaison between business system users and the technical team in as far as creating automated business solutions is concerned. The role holder will also be responsible for gathering, detailing and documenting business requirements. He/ she will propose ways in which the existing processes and systems can be used or changed to meet new business requirements as well as identify internal systems integrations needed to meet business requirements.

Responsibilities

• Carry out full business requirements discovery that includes interviewing relevant stakeholders and end-users. i.e. requirements elicitation
• Collect, classify, analyze and document business requirements as per set standards.
• Create high-level solution designs to meet business requirements by exploiting the functionality available in IT systems already in Safaricom, or by filling missing gaps with appropriate new systems, in accordance with enterprise architecture.
• Lead a project team composed of designers and developers to drive the business needs and expectations by ensuring business intent is understood and delivered by IT.
• Collaboratively develop test-driven business requirements and functional specifications with business, technical, and testing team members.
• Participate in technical/functional evaluation of bids for new systems.
• Ensure sensible consensus is reached for all requirements/specifications and help business, IT, and test leads to have the same mutual understanding thereof.
• Generate process documentation that clarifies and validates how the organization utilizes business systems to meet business requirements
• Liaise with other sections/departments in the delivery of services and projects as well as maintain good working relations between the Squad & Tribe team and all stakeholders.
• Provide support to the Business Unit by assisting in the development/reviewing/translating of User Requirement Specifications into a baseline BRD (Business Requirements Document) and building design documents (FDD, SDD).
• Promote proper release planning, guaranteeing adherence to business needs, change management governance and priorities and consequently, contribute to the reduction of development costs in future.
• Follow a prioritization process that is transparent and understandable for all parties involved.
• Participate in innovation to improve delivered products and services and to explore new technologies and their applications to the enterprise space.

Qualification

• Bachelor’s Degree in either Computer Science or Business Information Technology or in a relevant field
• At least 3 years’ work experience as a Software developer/Solutions Architect in a busy IT development environment, 2 years of which must include experience in systems analysis.
• Professional Experience in Business Analysis (CBAP, IIBA) as well as software development lifecycle is essential, in agile (SAFe, Scrum) and waterfall methodologies.
• Professional Experience in Solution Architecture (TOGAF)
• Professional Experience in Cloud Architecture (AWS, Azure, Huawei cloud and Google Cloud)
• Domain experience in financial services, financial technologies will be an added advantage.
• Broad technical expertise combined with business acumen and strong consulting skills.
• Knowledge in Micro service development
• Knowledge in App and Web development
• Knowledge in Relational Databases and NoSQL databases
• Knowledge in DevOps activities e.g. CI/CD, Creating deployment pipelines
• Adherence to best software development practices e.g. Code review, Refactoring, Versioning, Dead code elimination,
• Knowledge in performance benchmarking and performance tuning.
• Excellent systems analytical and communication (written and verbal)