Engineering Lead (Architecture & Solution Design)

Nedbank; Johannesburg; On-site; ZAR 1,000,000 - 1,700,000; Full time

Job summary

Nedbank invites applications for an Engineering Lead (Architecture & Solution Design) to spearhead scalable, secure technology solutions across Nedbank Infrastructure. The role focuses on Digital Mobile Applications and APIs, providing architectural direction and governance to multiple squads while ensuring alignment with corporate standards and strategic roadmaps.

Lead design reviews, mentor teams, and drive strategic modernization with emphasis on platform sustainability, security, and

Qualifications

• Must have Matric/Grade 12 and relevant IT qualifications.
• Diploma or Degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software Engineering, or related field.
• Sufficient understanding of enterprise architecture concepts.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end technology solution design across applications, data, integrations, and infrastructure.
• Produce high-level and detailed architecture artefacts (diagrams, data flows, security models).
• Ensure solutions align to enterprise principles, security standards, and governance.
• Drive future-state architecture decisions balancing delivery timelines and risk.
• Mentor developers and junior leads in design practices and architectural thinking.
• Review and approve technical designs and support complex problem solving.

Job description

Title: Engineering Lead (Architecture & Solution Design)

• Cluster: Personal and Private Banking | Nedbank Insurance | Business IT Enablement
• Employment Equity: Preference will be given to applicants from Underrepresented Groups

Job Purpose

To lead the design and evolution of scalable, secure, and sustainable technology solutions across the Nedbank Infrastructure. This role is Digital Mobile Application and APIs. Provide architectural leadership and technical direction to squads, ensuring solutions align to enterprise standards, business objectives, and long-term technology strategy. Act as the primary custodian of solution integrity from concept through implementation, continuously driving architectural excellence, platform sustainability, and engineering best practices.

Job Responsibilities

• Design end-to-end technology solutions spanning applications, integrations, data, infrastructure and operational processes.
• Produce and maintain high-level and detailed solution architecture artefacts, including: System and Security integration diagrams, Data flow diagrams and LSO diagrams.
• Ensure proposed solutions align to enterprise architecture principles, security standards, governance requirements, and target-state architectures.
• Evaluate existing technology capabilities and identify opportunities for reuse, simplification, and standardisation.
• Drive future-state architecture decisions while balancing delivery timelines, risk, and organisational constraints.
• Continuously review and reduce technical debt through strategic design decisions.

Technical Leadership:

• Provide technical leadership and guidance across multiple squads and delivery teams.
• Mentor developers and junior technical leads in design practices and architectural thinking.
• Review and approve high-level and detailed technical designs.
• Support teams with complex technical problem solving and production investigations.
• Foster a culture of engineering excellence, innovation, and continuous improvement.

Governance & Stakeholder Management:

• Present solution designs to architecture, risk, security, and governance forums.
• Drive alignment and obtain approvals from domain architects, platform owners, and technology specialists.
• Collaborate with Product Owners, Development Managers, Scrum Teams, and Business stakeholders to ensure solutions meet business objectives.
• Influence technical direction and negotiate design trade-offs across multiple stakeholder groups.

Delivery Enablement:

• Decompose large initiatives into logical delivery components and implementation roadmaps.
• Assist with delivery sequencing, dependency management, and capacity planning.
• Ensure functional and non-functional requirements are clearly defined and measurable.
• Participate in PI Planning, Definition of Ready reviews and architectural readiness assessments.
• Support successful implementation through consultation during development, testing and production deployment.

Job Responsibilities Continue

• Produce and maintain architecture and design artefacts that accurately represent the current and target state of systems.
• Ensure architecture documentation remains current throughout the solution lifecycle and reflects implementation decisions.
• Create and maintain documentation required for governance, operational support and future enhancements.
• Establish and promote documentation standards, templates and best practices across engineering teams.
• Ensure architectural knowledge is captured and shared to reduce key-person dependencies.
• Review architecture artefacts produced by squads to ensure consistency, quality and alignment to enterprise standards.
• Ensure all solutions are sufficiently documented to support: Development, Testing, Deployment, Support, Operational readiness and Future enhancements.

Engineering Sustainability:

• Continuously improve the architecture, platforms and services impacted by delivered solutions.
• Ensure solutions are: Scalable, Secure, Resilient, Maintainable, Observable and Cost effective.
• Drive adoption of engineering standards, design patterns, and reusable components.
• Maintain awareness of emerging technologies and assess their applicability to the organisation.
• Contribute to the technology strategy and target-state architecture roadmap.
• Identify opportunities to modernise platforms, simplify ecosystems and improve operational efficiency.
• Apply product-thinking principles when making architectural decisions.
• Balance short-term delivery needs with long-term strategic outcomes.

People Specification

Essential Qualifications - NQF Level

• Matric / Grade 12 / National Senior Certificate
• National Diploma in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software Engineering, or related field.
• Degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software Engineering, or related field.

Preferred Qualification

• BSc Computer Science or Equivalent Diploma
• BCom Information Systems
• BEng Software Engineering
• Postgraduate qualification in Technology or Architecture disciplines

Preferred Certifications

• TOGAF
• Azure Solutions Architect
• AWS Solutions Architect
• ITIL
• SAFe Agilist or SAFe Architect
• Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (advantageous)

Minimum Experience Level

• 8+ years software engineering experience.
• 5+ years technical design and solution architecture experience.
  • Experience designing distributed enterprise systems.
  • Experience with API-led integration patterns.
  • Experience with cloud-native and hybrid architectures.
  • Experience leading architecture discussions across multiple teams.

Preferred

• Financial Services or Insurance industry experience.
• Experience working within large-scale enterprise environments.
• Experience presenting to architecture review boards and governance forums.
• Experience leading platform modernisation or digital transformation initiatives.

Technical / Professional Knowledge

• IT Concepts
• Systems Analysis and design