Senior Enterprise Architecture & AI Leader

Be Different; Gauteng; On-site; ZAR 1,200,000 - 1,800,000; Full time

Job summary

Be Different is seeking a visionary Enterprise Architect to lead digital transformation and AI strategy for South Africa's innovative financial institution. You will align IT with business goals, design scalable architectures, and drive enterprise-wide initiatives across data, APIs, and platforms.

The role demands extensive leadership across technical and business teams, governance of architectural practices, and delivering strategic roadmaps to enable growth and resilience.

Qualifications

• Post Graduate Degree in Information Technology or Science
• Solid Enterprise Architecture experience with AI and emerging technology experience
• 10+ years significant experience as an Architect ideally with time in an Enterprise capacity
• Track record in IT disciplines including data management, integration and large-scale solution architectures
• Experience with architecture/design frameworks
• Ability to lead end-to-end architecture and design
• Proven ability to lead and drive high performance across technical and project teams
• Familiarity with architecture/design frameworks (EA/ITIL)
• Knowledge of SaaS, IaaS, PaaS, SOA, APIs, microservices, event-driven IT and predictive analytics
• Ability to present to C-level to technical staff

Responsibilities

• Align the IT strategy with the business strategy and define the technology architecture to support that strategy
• Link the business mission, vision, strategy and processes to the IT strategy, documenting this using multiple architectural models or views
• Develop complex business unit-wide architecture, roadmaps and processes to embed strategic applications across all domains
• Set strategies, policies, standards and practices to facilitate alignment and integration between business strategies, technology strategies and enterprise transformation activities
• Develop and maintain the architecture vision and strategy for an entire business unit / group
• Assess technical integrity by evaluating the solution's architecture to meet the required standards and best practices
• Verify that the solution is robust, scalable and maintainable
• Evaluate coherence to ensure that the solution aligns with the overall enterprise architecture and integrates with existing systems
• Lead risk assessment processes and mitigation strategies
• Lead security assessment to protect against threats and ensure compliance
• Lead agility assessment to ensure adaptability to changing requirements
• Lead capacity assessments to evaluate workload handling and performance
• Provide recommendations and findings for enterprise architecture solutions
• Document assessment findings and provide actionable recommendations
• Communicate results to stakeholders clearly
• Define strategic initiatives and map execution plans for desirable outcomes
• Lead transformation engagements to support roadmaps and business cases for EA services
• Collaborate with analysts, stakeholders, and PMs to gather requirements
• Act as trusted EA partner to CIOs and stakeholders for architecture direction
• Develop the EA framework to support enterprise-wide or country solutions

Skills

Enterprise Architecture

AI strategy

Data management

ITIL / EA frameworks

Agile / Lean

Stakeholder management

Solution design

Open data / APIs / microservices

Risk & security assessment

Architecture governance

Education

Post Graduate Degree in Information Technology or Science

Job description

Be Different is seeking a visionary Enterprise Architect to lead digital transformation and AI strategy for South Africa's innovative financial institution. You will align IT with business goals, design scalable architectures, and drive enterprise-wide initiatives across data, APIs, and platforms.

The role demands extensive leadership across technical and business teams, governance of architectural practices, and delivering strategic roadmaps to enable growth and resilience.