Solution Architect.MGN Pak - TECH - Architecture and Devops.MIT - PAKCOE

This role is responsible for designing and reviewing optimal solution approaches for Retail Banking Group initiatives, ensuring alignment between business requirements and the enterprise technology strategy. The Solution Architect works across both agile squads and waterfall-managed systems, collaborating closely with business, product, engineering, and technology teams to deliver scalable, fit-for-purpose architectures. The position involves establishing guidance for solution development, overseeing low-level design implementation, and driving value-driven outcomes that support the strategic goals of the Retail Banking Group.

Key Responsibilities

- Drive the identification and design of solutions to meet evolving business needs within retail banking.
- Ensure adherence to Retail Banking Group architectural governance and Enterprise Architecture standards throughout the solution and software lifecycle.
- Review and support engineering teams in building robust, scalable products and platforms.
- Promote the adoption of APIs and microservices, including external APIs for partner integrations and open banking, as well as internal APIs for modular service orchestration.
- Encourage reusability and extensibility across retail platforms to accelerate product delivery.
- Recommend and oversee modernization initiatives to address evolving retail banking requirements.
- Guide development teams in implementing security architecture and standards specific to customer-facing applications.
- Embed non-functional requirements such as performance, availability, and scalability into all solution designs.
- Collaborate within agile delivery models, working closely with product, engineering, and operations teams to ensure timely and scalable solution delivery.
- Maintain a retail-focused technology radar to monitor emerging trends and recommend innovations for continuous improvement.
- Provide input into enterprise architecture roadmaps from a retail perspective, ensuring scalability and adaptability.

Required Qualifications

- Over 15 years of application development experience, including at least 5 years in solution architecture.
- Strong knowledge of banking technology with a minimum of 5 years’ experience designing solutions for banking applications.
- Proven ability to operate within both retail digital squads and systems of record environments, balancing agile and waterfall methodologies.
- Expertise in creating blueprints, high-level, and low-level designs.
- Experience guiding technology teams to ensure application and platform stability, including performance testing and tuning.
- Capability to critically evaluate technology solutions from vendors and internal teams to propose optimal approaches.
- Skilled in identifying issues within current application landscapes and providing effective remediation strategies.
- Experience defining both functional and non-functional application requirements.
- Proficient in architecting microservices-based applications.
- Familiarity with online commerce and omni-channel retail business practices.
- Strong knowledge of multi-cloud environments.
- Expertise in Domain Driven Design, microservices, APIs, and front-end development tools such as Java, Node.js, SpringBoot, API Gateway, service mesh, React, React Native, .NET Core, and emerging AI technologies.
- Excellent understanding of SQL and NoSQL databases including SQL Server, Oracle, and MongoDB.
- Deep knowledge of security standards and protocols such as OAuth 2.0, FAPI 2.0, TLS, mTLS, GDPR/PII compliance.
- Experience working within Agile DevOps environments utilizing continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) processes.
- Strong senior stakeholder management skills.

Preferred Qualifications and Benefits

- Enterprise Architecture certification such as TOGAF is preferred.
- Opportunity to work in a dynamic environment that blends agile and traditional methodologies.
- Exposure to cutting-edge retail banking technologies and innovation initiatives.
- Collaboration with cross-functional teams to influence enterprise-wide technology roadmaps.

This role reports to the Expertise Lead - Architecture and works closely with Product Owners, Team Leads, engineering teams, infrastructure, and enterprise architecture groups to ensure solutions align with broader IT landscapes and business objectives. The Solution Architect is also responsible for resolving application build and deployment issues and conducting end-to-end diagnostics of digital journeys to backend systems. Decision-making authority includes driving optimal solution approaches and recommending alternative or emerging technology stacks.