SUMMARY:
Solution / Technical Architect -03 Months Contract

POSITION INFO:

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, securit