- Location–Nrb, Kenya
- Company–-Absa Group
- Job Type–On-site, Full-time
- Experience level–Mid-senior level
About the job
Empowering Africa’s tomorrow, together…one story at a time.
With over 100 years of rich history and strongly positioned as a local bank with regional and international expertise, a career with our family offers the opportunity to be part of this exciting growth journey, to reset our future and shape our destiny as a proudly African group.
My Career Development Portal: Wherever you are in your career, we are here for you. Design your future. Discover leading-edge guidance, tools and support to unlock your potential. You are Absa. You are a possibility.
Job Summary
To develop technical solutions and architectures to problems and opportunities presented by Businesses, considering functional and non-functional aspects of such solutions and utilizing available technology assets.
The role will act as the Solutions Architect for major system projects and will provide technical direction and proposals to meet business requirements or cover existing functionality and design gaps.
Additionally, the role is responsible for maintaining the availability and reliability of IT infrastructure to ensure that IT can effectively meet service targets in accordance with planned business operational objectives; to ensure that proper end to end solution design and functionality is achieved and released into the production environments.
Job Description
Key Accountabilities
Architecture design – 65%
- Apply relevant research methodologies, tools, and techniques to gather information effectively and purposefully
- Provide specialist advice and support in area of accountability to ensure that identified solutions and recommendations are appropriate and effective.
- Deliver IT architecture and Solution analysis services as per agreed performance contract
- Understand and apply existing best practice frameworks to assist in the implementation of identified subject matter processes and standards.
- Identify and recommend new innovative ways of achieving quality results
- Optimize the availability of the IT infrastructure to deliver cost-effective improvements that deliver tangible benefits to business units and customers
- Provide a range of IT availability reporting to ensure that agreed levels of availability, reliability and maintainability are measured and monitored on an ongoing basis
- Take actions to achieve reductions in the frequency and duration of incidents that impact Infrastructure Services availability
- Ensure shortfalls in Infrastructure Services availability are recognized and appropriate corrective actions are identified and progressed
- Create and maintain a forward-looking availability plan aimed at improving the overall availability of IT services and infrastructure components to ensure that existing and future availability requirements can be met
- Organize and maintain a regular availability review process with both key business and IT representatives
- Initiate and coordinate actions required to maintain or improve the availability of IT infrastructure.
- Act as a coordination point for changes to availability levels of IT infrastructure when needed.
- Establish measures and reporting that reflect business, user and IT support requirements with regard to IT Infrastructure availability
- Participate in Change Control meetings to assess and authorize changes from an availability perspective
- Assist in SLA negotiation efforts from an availability capability standpoint
- Define the key targets of availability required for the applications and their components that underpin a new or enhanced IT application as the basis for an SLA agreement
- Analyse and review actual availability levels achieved against SLAs and OLAs
- Maintain an awareness of technology advancements and best practices that support application availability
Solution Analysis – 20%
- Translate documented business requirements into functional and non-functional technical requirements for development/implementation.
- Support project management and provide technical oversight on projects to ensure that requirements are in alignment with business strategies and business architecture roadmap/framework
- Translate strategic initiatives into delivery-focused change initiatives, while translating business processes and issues into effective conceptual and logical models.
- Reviewing development to ensure what is delivered is in line with technical requirements and business intent
- Set a baseline through the introduction of standards and working practices such as coding standards, design principles and tools.
- Experimenting by building prototypes, frameworks and foundations to be consumed by the technical team.
- Propose and keep a repository of solutions and architectural improvements.
- Participating in technology selection and identifying fit-for-purpose technology solutions.
Business Liaison – 10%
- Identify service needs for the Business Units represented by IT
- Escalate Business unit service issues to the Service Manager
- Communicate service status on service issues to the Business Unit
- Assist in SLA negotiation efforts with Business Unit(s)
- Report on quality of services rendered to Business Unit(s)
Risk Management – 5%
- Build relationships with the country’s Technology Risk and Compliance team and provide support wherever required.
- Contribute and deliver to the improvement of the risk profile by delivering improved governance, risk management, controls and compliance requirements.
- Devise and implement an effective plan to deliver a satisfactory risk and audit profile for Operations & IT and achieve audit and assurance targets.
- Proactively identify solution design & delivery risk & associated mitigating strategies throughout the development/initiative lifecycle
- Apply the organization’s risk & governance frameworks
- Ensure solution designs align with the organizations regulatory, compliance & governance frameworks
- Proactively involve/engage chapter & guild leads in solution decision-making, applying an enterprise-wide lens to product & service development
- Deliver on time & on budget (always).
People 10%
- Participate in peer & dev team reviews (code, solution, testing etc.) and transfer knowledge and capability across delivery teams for improved solutions & evolving architectural practices
- Work as a high-performance contributor as part of agile delivery teams across the organization & continuously improve skills & knowledge in agile/other practices for successful delivery.
- Build & evolve the architectural capability of Delivery teams across the business through active coaching & information/knowledge sharing
Education And Experience Required
- Undergraduate or higher in Computer Science or any other Technology-related field.
- IT infrastructure planning and operations experience
- 7 years minimum IT experience
- Experience in digital financial services from either Telco or Financial Institution companies.
- Experience in solutions development lifecycle management using waterfall, agile & hybrid methodologies.
Subject Matter Expert Qualifications
- ITIL Certification.
- Any cloud certification.
- Network certification – Specialist in Enterprise Design and implementations.
- Firewalls, switching and routing certifications
- Excellent understanding of Infrastructure.
- Minimum of 4 years of service management experience
Knowledge And Skills
- Translate Bus Requirements to Tech Solutions
- Cloud expertise
- ITIL – Governance Framework
Absa Bank Kenya is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer. Preference will be given to suitable candidates from designated groups whose appointments will contribute towards the achievement of equitable demographic representation of our workforce profile and add to the diversity of the Bank.
- Application Deadline – 6th September 2024***
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