Solutions Architect

Sanlam; Bellville; On-site; ZAR 60 000 - 100 000; Full time

Job summary

Join a forward-thinking company as a Solutions Architect, where you will play a pivotal role in driving cloud migration initiatives. This position offers the chance to blend operational excellence with strategic enterprise thinking, ensuring high standards for code quality and performance. You'll collaborate with various teams, mentor developers, and contribute to a transformative journey that enhances financial resilience. Embrace the opportunity to grow in a dynamic environment that values innovation and diversity, making a significant impact on the organization and its clients.

Benefits

Flexible Working Hours

Health Insurance

Retirement Benefits

Professional Development Opportunities

Employee Assistance Programs

Qualifications

• 10+ years in Application Development and Solutions Design.
• Strong understanding of cloud architecture and migration.

Responsibilities

• Design and document cloud architecture solutions.
• Lead architectural design for Group Cloud Migration.

Skills

Cloud Architecture Principles

DevSecOps

Application Development

Infrastructure Design

Performance Optimization

Analytical Skills

Problem Solving

Excellent Communication

Education

IT Degree

Tools

Azure

AWS

Veracode

SonarQube

Job description

Who are we?

Sanlam Corporate forms part of the Sanlam Group which offers retail and corporate life insurance, health and investment products in South Africa. Our vision is to be the preferred partner to Corporate and Public Sector by providing an awesome client experience and comprehensive solutions that enable the financial resilience and prosperity of those entities and their employees. We tap into over 100 years of expertise to provide cost-effective Employee Benefits and Healthcare Solutions that enable financial confidence for our members. We enable our clients to make better retirement and risk decisions today through determined and passionate thought leadership and best-in-class people, innovative products and proven processes all designed to help people live a better life tomorrow.

We believe in creating and cultivating a positive, energised working environment that gives every individual the opportunity to achieve success by embracing diversity and growing our talent.

Build a successful career with us

We’re all about building strong, lasting relationships with our employees. We know that you have hopes for your future – your career, your personal development and of achieving great things. We pride ourselves in helping our employees to realise their worth. Through its five business clusters – Sanlam Fintech, Sanlam Life and Savings, Sanlam Investment Group, Sanlam Allianz, Santam, as well as MiWay and the Group Office – the group provides many opportunities for growth and development.

What will you do?

We are seeking an experienced Solutions Architect to join our Architecture team, reporting directly to our Head of Architecture. You will combine your operational excellence with strategic enterprise thinking to drive our cloud migration initiatives while establishing strong software engineering disciplines across our DevOps and Agile teams. You will bridge the gap between hands-on technical implementations and business strategy, particularly in the context of our multi-year cloud transformation journey, while ensuring high standards for code quality, security, scalability, and performance.

Your duties will include:

• Design and document cloud architecture solutions that align with our migration strategy and business requirements
• Collaborate with Sanlam Group Technology, Sanlam Corporate and Amazon Web Services teams to assess current workloads and determine optimal migration approaches
• Provide technical guidance on modernization efforts, including refactoring and redesign of applications
• Optimize DevOps processes and tooling to enhance CI/CD capabilities
• Implement and maintain security scanning tools (Veracode, SonarQube) within our cloud environment
• Define, evolve, and drive adoption of software engineering best practices across Agile teams
• Establish metrics and measurement frameworks for code quality, security, scalability, and performance
• Prepare and present monthly metrics reports to management committee (Manco)
• Conduct regular stakeholder meetings to ensure alignment between technical solutions and business objectives
• Develop architecture roadmaps that support our long-term transformation goals
• Stay current with industry trends and emerging technologies, evaluating their potential application within our organization
• Mentor developers and engineers on software engineering best practices and cloud architecture principles

Key Responsibilities

• Lead architectural design and implementation for our Group Cloud Migration project
• Support the DevOps migration from Azure on-premises to Azure Cloud
• Establish and evolve software engineering disciplines across Agile teams, focusing on code quality, security, scalability, and performance
• Ensure architecture alignment with Group and Sanlam Life & Savings Cluster initiatives and standards
• Identify and analyse emerging technology trends and architectural patterns to inform strategic decision-making
• Validate business use cases against emerging technologies to accelerate adoption while mitigating risks
• Develop, maintain and report on key metrics related to code quality, security, scalability, and performance for monthly management committee (Manco) reports
  

Qualification and Experience

• IT Degree (preferably)
• 10+ years’ experience in Application Development, DevSecOps, Infrastructure and Solutions Design.
• IT Certification in one or more development technologies areas of specialization
• 10+ years technical lead experience in an operations or development role
• Industry certifications required such as:
• Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert
• DevOps or SRE certifications
• AWS Certified Solutions Architect (advantageous)
• TOGAF Certification (advantageous)
• SAFe Agile certifications (advantageous)
  

Knowledge and Skills

• Improve Code Quality & Code Security: Identify the Metric need to baseline and measure improvement
• Enforce Standards & Reduce Incidents, Technical Debt:
• Ensure Alignment and Cohesion of all SC IT Landscape Applications and Platforms.
• Strong understanding of cloud architecture principles and best practices
• Experience with large-scale cloud migration projects, particularly in financial services
• Demonstrated ability to translate business requirements into technical solutions
• Knowledge of enterprise architecture frameworks and governance models
• In-depth understanding of software engineering best practices and metrics
• Experience with performance optimization and scalability planning
• Excellent communication skills, able to explain complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders
• Excellent interpersonal skills to: coordinate, align and delivery between various IT teams and disciplines.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team
  

Core Competencies

Cultivates Innovation by creating new and better ways for the organisation to be successful
Client Focus - Building strong customer relationships and delivering customer-centric solutions
Drives Results - Consistently achieving results, even under tough circumstances
Collaborates - Building partnerships and working collaboratively with others to meet shared objectives
Resilience - Rebounding from setbacks and adversity when facing difficult situations

Behavioural Competencies

Organisational Savvy – Maneuvering comfortably through complex policy, process and people related organizational dynamics.
Manages Complexity – Making sense of complex, high quantity and sometimes contradictory information to effectively solve problems.
Drives Engagement – Creating a climate where people are motivated to do their best to help the organisation achieve its objectives.
Business Insight – Applying knowledge of the business and marketplace to advance the organisation’s goals.

Turnaround time

The shortlisting process will only start once the application due date has been reached. The time taken to complete this process will depend on how far you progress and the availability of managers.

Our commitment to transformation

The Sanlam Group is committed to achieving transformation and embraces diversity. This commitment is what drives us to achieve a diverse, inclusive and equitable workplace as we believe that these are key components to ensuring a thriving and sustainable business in South Africa. The Group's Employment Equity plan and targets will be considered as part of the selection process.