Solution / Technical Architect – Three Months Contract

Location

Gauteng, Johannesburg

Job Description

We are seeking for the Solution / Technical Architect that will be responsible to define, develop and maintain the technical architectures and designs for specific business functional/technical areas and provide high-level roadmaps for the implementation of the solutions, aligning to a common technical direction ensuring accomplishment of the roadmaps.To define and oversee the project’s technical solutions, ensuring system scalability, security, and alignment with business requirements.To guide development teams, make key architectural decisions, and ensure the delivered solution meets project standards and long‑term technology goals.

Job Duties

Architecture Definition & Governance

• Define the end‑to‑end architecture for product solutions, including channels, APIs, orchestration, data, security, and integrations.
• Establish architectural principles, patterns, and standards tailored to regulatory and banking requirements.
• Create solution architecture documents, integration diagrams, and technical models for all project components.
• Create high-level and low-level architecture diagrams covering channels, APIs, integration layers, orchestration, data stores, and observability.
• Ensure alignment with enterprise architecture and the bank’s long‑term technology roadmap.

Product (Payments) Domain Solutioning

• Architect solutions across payment types (e.g., EFT, RTGS, ISO 20022, instant payments, etc).
• Design flows for authorization, clearing, settlement, reconciliation, exception handling, and dispute processes.
• Ensure compliance with scheme rules and payment rails (local and international).

API, Integration & Event Architecture

• Define API specifications, integration patterns, and data contracts for internal and external services.
• Architect event‑driven patterns for transaction lifecycle tracking, auditability, notifications, and monitoring.
• Architect serverless or containerized microservices using AWS, e.g. Lambda, ECS Fargate, EKS, etc.
• Select and design message queuing, streaming, and orchestration frameworks (e.g., SQS, Kafka, Step Functions).
• Define synchronous and asynchronous integration patterns using AWS services.
• Establish API contracts, versioning, anti-corruption layers, and backward compatibility strategies.

Security, Compliance & Risk Management

• Define and enforce banking‑grade security patterns.
• Ensure compliance with security standards including PCI-DSS, POPIA, AML/KYC, and encryption requirements.
• Implement fraud‑detection, risk‑scoring, and threat‑modeling considerations in system design including zero-trust principles.

High Availability, Scalability & Resilience

• Architect for zero‑downtime, disaster recovery, and multi‑AZ or multi‑region resiliency.
• Define RTO/RPO, failover models, and automated recovery mechanisms including auto-healing, retry strategies, and circuit breakers.
• Ensure the platform supports peak transaction volumes and scaling patterns for future growth.

Data Architecture & Observability

• Define data flows, schemas, lineage, audit logging, and storage strategies.
• Ensure accuracy, immutability, and traceability of financial transactions.
• Ensure strong observability: transaction logs, event streams, metrics, distributed tracing.

Technical Leadership & Delivery Support

• Guide engineering teams during design, development, integration, and testing phases.
• Conduct architecture and design reviews, code reviews, ensuring quality and alignment with standards.
• Provide hands‑on technical direction to resolve complex issues, bottlenecks, or design trade‑offs.
• Coach teams on cloud-native development patterns, CI/CD pipelines, and DevOps practices.
• Assist with troubleshooting complex production issues, performance bottlenecks, or design defects.

Governance, Documentation & Stakeholder Management

• Evaluate and guide third‑party vendors, payment gateways, and fintech integrators.
• Collaborate with business, product owners, compliance, and operations teams to validate requirements.
• Maintain architectural artifacts—ADR logs, diagrams, standards, and patterns library.
• Facilitate knowledge transfer to development teams, operations, and support.
• Communicate architectural decisions clearly to business, product, compliance, and operational teams.
• Collaborate with enterprise architects, cloud governance, and cybersecurity functions.

Performance Engineering & Non-Functional Requirements

• Define non‑functional requirements for throughput, latency, concurrency, scaling and uptime.
• Ensure architectures support peak loads (day-end, high-volume windows, seasonal events).
• Collaborate with QA to ensure performance testing, security testing, and certification cycles are comprehensive.
• Validate end‑to‑end flows for correctness, idempotency, and error‑handling.

List of Deliverables/Outputs:

All deliverables must follow Business Online+ Analysis & Architecture templates, be version-controlled, and traceable in Jira/Confluence. These deliverables will be based on scope and demand as per the goals of the project.

Architecture & Design

• High‑Level Architecture (HLA)
• Detailed Solution or Technical Architecture Document
• AWS service topology diagrams
• Network architecture (VPC, subnets, routing, firewall policies)
• Architecture Decision Records (ADRs)
• Integration and component interaction diagrams
• Non‑functional requirements (NFRs) specification
• Cloud cost estimation model (AWS Pricing Tool–based)

Payments Domain Architecture

• Product domain context and capability model
• Detailed payment flow diagrams (authorization, clearing, settlement, disputes, etc.)
• ISO 20022 mapping and schema definitions
• Transaction lifecycle documentation
• Exception and dispute handling workflows
• Idempotency design specification
• Payment orchestration blueprint

API, Integration & Event Architecture

• API specifications (OpenAPI/Swagger), request/response schemas, error codes, idempotency, pagination, retry/backoff rules.
• Service contracts for internal/external integrations.
• Integration patterns library (sync/async/event-driven)
• Event models and event schema registry
• Step Functions workflow definitions
• Queue/topic configurations for SQS/SNS/EventBridge
• Microservices interaction diagrams
• API security and throttling policy definitions
• Anti‑corruption layer design documentation

Security, Compliance & Risk Management

• Threat Model & Security Architecture Document
• Security Architecture and Designs
• Data protection strategy (encryption, tokenization, masking)
• PCI‑DSS alignment checklist and remediation plan
• Compliance architecture (POPIA, AML/KYC)
• WAF, Shield, firewall rules, and API security specifications

High Availability, Resilience & Disaster Recovery

• Multi‑AZ/Multi‑Region deployment diagrams
• Resilience Architecture Document
• RTO/RPO mapping and compliance validation
• Failover and auto‑healing designs
• Circuit breaker and retry strategy documentation
• Backup/restore blueprint

Data Architecture & Observability

• Data architecture & lifecycle document
• Database schema designs
• Data lineage diagrams
• Archiving and retention policy document
• S3 bucket strategy (partitioning, encryption, lifecycle rules)
• Observability strategy document
• CloudWatch dashboard designs
• Logging standards and log taxonomy
• Alerting, thresholds, and escalation matrix
• Operational runbooks (for support teams)
• Transaction observability design (journey tracing)
• KPI dashboards (latency, throughput, settlement status)

Technical Leadership & Delivery Support

• Detailed technical design reviews
• Service boundary and domain model documentation
• Code quality and architectural standards
• DevOps pipeline architecture (CI/CD)
• Reusable patterns library (e.g., API patterns, event patterns)
• Technical onboarding and knowledge‑sharing materials
• Engineering governance checklists (design review, release gates)
• Architecture runway for upcoming sprints

Governance, Documentation & Stakeholder Management

• Architecture governance framework
• Technical risk register and mitigation strategies
• Architecture review board (ARB) submissions
• Passed quality gates (e.g. Architecture, Cloud, Security, Compliance)
• Stakeholder communication maps and decision updates
• Vendor evaluation and comparison reports
• Integration contract agreements and SLA documentation
• Updated architecture repository (Confluence/SharePoint/etc.)
• Change impact assessments for new features
• Feature planning and decomposition
• Clear upstream/downstream dependencies, sequencing, milestones, and impact on release trains.
• Release Governance and Go-Live support

Performance Engineering & Non-Functional Requirements

• • NFR catalogue (performance, latency, concurrency, uptime)
  • Capacity planning model
  • Load & stress test plan
  • Performance test harness requirements
  • Bottleneck analysis & tuning recommendations
  • Concurrency and throttling patterns
  • SLA/SLO definitions per service
  • Performance certification report

Required Qualifications

• Relevant professional qualifications in information technology, computer science, software engineering, or a related discipline.
• Demonstrable knowledge of architectural frameworks and methodologies.

Education

• Bachelor’s degree or higher in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related field.

Experience

• Minimum of five years’ experience in a solution or technical architecture role within the banking or financial services industry.
• Proven track record of delivering architecture solutions in complex enterprise environments.
• Experience in designing and implementing technology solutions that comply with industry regulations and security standards.
• Hands-on experience with system integration, cloud technologies, and modern software development practises.