Architecture Lead

Morae; Wes-Kaap; On-site; ZAR 800,000 - 1,000,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Opportunities for professional growth

Commitment to employment equity

Collaborative work environment

Job summary

A leading technology firm in South Africa is seeking an exceptional Architecture Lead to shape the architectural direction across its AI-native product portfolio. This senior role involves making system-level architectural decisions, ensuring scalability, security, and enterprise readiness as the platform evolves. The ideal candidate has over 10 years of software architecture experience, proven expertise in AI-driven systems, and excellent communication skills to influence diverse teams. Join us to lead the future of architecture at our company.

Qualifications

• Proven experience owning architecture for AI-native systems.
• Experience defining architecture across multiple teams.
• Strong understanding of enterprise security and compliance.

Responsibilities

• Define architectural direction for MorAI and related products.
• Guide teams on architectural trade-offs in agent-based systems.
• Collaborate with product leadership to align architecture with business strategy.

Skills

Architectural design

Decision-making

Microservices architecture

Cloud-native architecture

Communication across technical audiences

Education

10+ years of experience in software architecture

3+ years in senior architecture role

Job description

Reports to: Product Engineering Director

Employment Type: Full-Time

About the Role

We are seeking an exceptional Architecture Lead to provide architectural authority and direction across Morae’s AI-native product portfolio.

This is a senior architecture leadership role accountable for system-level architectural decision-making, defining architectural standards, and guiding how Morae’s products and shared capabilities evolve over time. The role exists to ensure architectural coherence, scalability, security, and enterprise readiness as the platform and product set grow.

As Architecture Lead, you will be responsible for defining and maintaining architectural direction for MorAI, including the decisions, principles, and integration standards that govern how AI capabilities are designed, evolved, and used across Morae’s products.

You will work closely with product leadership, engineering leads, DevEx, and DevSecOps to translate business strategy and product goals into clear architectural intent, constraints, and guidance.

Key Responsibilities

Architectural Authority & Direction (MorAI)

• Be accountable for architectural decision-making related to MorAI and AI-driven capabilities across the product portfolio
• Define, maintain, and evolve architectural principles and standards governing agent-based systems and AI capability integration
• Own architectural decision records (ADRs) related to AI systems and platform evolution
• Act as the final escalation point for architectural decisions within scope

Agentic Systems Architecture

• Provide architectural guidance for the design and evolution of agentic models and agent-based workflows
• Define decision frameworks for task decomposition, agent coordination, and state or context management
• Guide teams on architectural trade-offs related to autonomy, control, cost, and reliability in agent-based systems
• Define architectural standards for microservices and distributed systems across Morae products
• Establish guidance on service boundaries, interaction patterns, and dependency management
• Provide architectural direction for event-driven workflows, long-running processes, and failure recovery strategies
• Ensure architectures support observability, debuggability, and operational stability
• Define architectural standards for how products integrate with shared capabilities and services
• Govern API-first architectural principles, including interface design, versioning, and lifecycle management
• Ensure architectural consistency across products while enabling appropriate team autonomy
• Guide architectural decisions related to multi-tenancy, scalability, resilience, and data separation
• Define architectural standards governing model access, prompt orchestration, and embeddings or vector stores
• Provide guidance on model lifecycle management, rollout, and evolution
• Guide architectural decisions related to cost control, latency, reliability, and auditability of AI workloads
• Ensure AI-related architectural decisions align with enterprise security and compliance requirements

Architectural Governance & Standards

• Establish and maintain architectural principles, standards, and decision frameworks
• Conduct architectural reviews and provide guidance without becoming a delivery bottleneck
• Ensure architectural intent is consistently applied across teams
• Partner with DevEx and DevSecOps to ensure architecture is realised through appropriate tooling and practices
• Maintain architectural artefacts communicating current state, target direction, and evolution paths

Technology Assessment & Architectural Evolution

• Lead architectural evaluation of emerging AI, agentic, and platform technologies
• Maintain an architecture and technology radar
• Guide experimentation and proof-of-concepts from an architectural perspective
• Incorporate learnings into architectural standards and long-term direction

Cross-Functional Architectural Leadership

• Work closely with product and engineering leadership to ensure architecture supports product strategy
• Translate business, regulatory, and product requirements into architectural guidance
• Act as a trusted architectural advisor to senior leadership and stakeholders
• Influence teams through principles, rationale, and architectural authority

Required Skills & Experience

• Proven experience owning architecture for AI-native, multi-product SaaS systems
• Demonstrated experience making architectural decisions involving agent-based or AI-driven systems
• Strong background in microservices and distributed systems architecture
• Experience defining and governing architecture across multiple teams or products
• Deep understanding of cloud-native architectural patterns (AWS, Azure, or GCP)
• Strong understanding of enterprise security, compliance, and data protection considerations
• Experience with multi-tenant system architecture

Leadership & Soft Skills

• Strong architectural judgment and decision-making capability
• Ability to balance long-term architectural direction with delivery realities
• Excellent communication skills across technical and non-technical audiences
• Proven ability to influence without direct line management
• Comfortable operating at strategic and detailed design levels

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in software architecture and system design
• 3+ years in a senior architecture, principal engineer, or equivalent role with architectural ownership
• Demonstrated ownership of product or platform architecture
• Strong collaboration and influencing skills across senior stakeholders
• Excellent written, visual, and verbal communication skills

Bonus Qualifications

• Experience in legal tech or other regulated industries
• Experience operating AI-driven systems in audit-heavy environments
• Experience working in global, multi-tenant SaaS organisations

Why Join Morae?

This role offers the opportunity to own architectural direction for a shared AI platform that underpins Morae’s products. You will shape how AI capabilities are architected, governed, and evolved across the organisation, providing clarity and coherence as the platform and product set scale.

Employment Equity

Morae is committed to Employment Equity and transformation. Candidates from designated groups are encouraged to apply in line with our EE objectives.

Our privacy policy can be found here: https://www.morae.com/privacy-policy