Chief Data Architect at Absa in South Africa

Chief Data Architect Location: Sandton Empowering Africa’s tomorrow, together…one story at a time. With over 100 years of rich history and strongly positioned as a local bank with regional and international expertise, a career with our family offers the opportunity to be part of this exciting growth journey, to reset our future and shape our destiny as a proudly African group. Job Summary Leverage deep and broad skills as well as understanding of the organization, leading industry practice and group strategy to shape the strategic architecture while providing strong leadership of the Design and Delivery of solutions across a large and diverse area comprised of several portfolios or a full business unit to achieve a large positive impact upon the organization, customers and colleagues (which will be felt well into the future). Job Description Architecture Own and maintain the enterprise data architecture blueprint, applying data fabric and data mesh principles. Be accountable for establishing and managing the data product architecture pattern, including defining, certifying, publishing, and overseeing the consumption of data products. Act as the design authority for the federated lakehouse architecture, encompassing medallion layers, open table formats, and multi-cloud storage solutions. Provide leadership in semantic architecture, driving the adoption of FIBO/BIAN standards, overseeing ontology governance, and shaping the knowledge graph strategy. Contributes to Group Strategy and carries the ‘one stop shop’ accountability for the technology roadmap that achieves and enables that Strategy across the business unit in which they operate. Lead the evolution of the overall architecture of their business unit (across business and technical domains). Architects and evolves the federated data ownership model — balancing BU autonomy with enterprise coherence and defines the governance guardrails within which domain teams operate independently Works collaboratively across multiple business units and functions to ensure that their architectures (current and future) are coherent, stable, scalable, modular and fit for purpose while delivering optimal customer and colleague experiences. Accomplished practitioner and teacher of several of the following: design thinking, evolutionary architectures, DevOps, robust engineering practices, data driven techniques and most-importantly customer centric practices. Able to teach others to use these to craft fit-for purpose and innovative solutions. Contributes to, co-evolves and co-curates Absa’s architecture principles and practices and ensures that all associated technology solutions & roadmaps are true to these. Chief Data Architect at Absa must understand: BCBS 239 (risk data aggregation and reporting). RDARR (lineage from source to regulatory report). POPIA / GDPR (privacy by design). Data sovereignty across 9 African markets. EU AI Act implications for governed training data. In collaboration with the CTO, explore new technologies & lead the technology innovation agenda for a specific business as it relates to our business strategy. Deep expertise in data platform architecture (lakehouses, streaming, virtualisation, MDM). Proficiency with open data standards (Apache Iceberg, Delta Lake, Parquet, FIBO, BIAN). Experience with data mesh / data fabric design patterns at enterprise scale. Understanding of AI/ML data architecture (feature stores, model serving, training data governance). Multi-cloud data architecture (AWS, Azure, hybrid patterns). Chief Data Architect should: Set direction (architecture blueprints, standards, roadmaps). Govern decisions (architecture council, design authority). Enable teams (patterns, reference architectures, reusable components). Defining the data product architecture pattern (contracts, SLAs, discoverability, certification). Designing the analytics consumption layer (self-service, BI, AI/ML experimentation). Data marketplace architecture for cross-domain data sharing. Data virtualisation strategy (when to virtualise vs. materialise). Partners with the CDAIO on data governance strategy and operating model. Works with domain leads to ensure data products meet enterprise standards. Collaborates with cloud platform teams on landing zone design for data workloads. Engages regulatory teams on data lineage and compliance architecture. Experienced solver of wicked problems under a cohesive and integrated approach which spans customers, colleagues, process & technology. Understand the existing architectural landscape & associated business and technology solutions and the degree of alignment with strategy. Craft solutions and roadmaps to evolve this landscape towards Absa’s strategic objectives in a commercially viable and efficient fashion. Work in a leadership role in the delivery of these solutions and roadmaps. Work in partnership with the CIOs and risk teams (where applicable). Chairs a business unit architecture council and is accountable approver for all architectures within that domain. Has a voting membership in the Group Architecture Council (the highest architecture forum in Absa). Understand relevant Group initiatives and integrate these with the specific business strategic initiatives, complement them or challenge them where appropriate. Manage / oversee solution implementation & quality across Dev Teams e.g. cross business solution reviews, code reviews, testing etc. Assume one stop shop accountability for the efficient & effective solution delivery across businesses who are interdependent with & or dependent on delivery of your business area (by maintaining the principles above or ensuring provisioning with limited / no queuing). Use data-driven techniques as a tool to drive business improvement which may entail defining data requirements, ensure data availability & monitor & leverage data & analytics to identify opportunities for improvement across the technology area for a business (customer, usage, performance, quality etc.). Ensure the appropriate resourcing (Right People, Right Fit Capabilities, Right Roles, Right Time) of all solution design & implementation teams (Run & Build) across the business. Stay ahead of the curve on new technology & associated capabilities & leverage new found knowledge and skill to influence the architectural direction of the broader organization (bank) as well as the business with a focus on improving service delivery to customers & sustainable & profitable business operations for the organization. Scaled learning is a foundational principle of this. Delivery management for business wide initiatives led by Architecture teams (where there is a specific product / service you manage) With fluency in the deployment of agile methodologies, resource & manage the appropriate number and nature (skill & capability) of squad-based teams to execute on both Run & Change elements of delivery. Work in collaboration with transformation & change teams for effective resourcing and delivery management of various programmes at all levels (SI, BU etc.). Ensure agile practices are implemented and sustained for effective delivery to business e.g. RETRO’s etc. Positively & proactively manage product owner relationships. Proactively engage with & partner broader enablement functions to drive alignment & leading practice in technology design & deployment. People Set & Cascade Architectural direction across technology teams. Proactively attract, recruit, develop, retain, reward & deploy a diverse resource base aligned to an ever-evolving tech environment (ahead of demand). Build a high-performance team environment through self-directed teams by driving performance management & measurement that is aligned with agile working practices (including daily, weekly, etc. sprint routines, regular & honest feedback, OKRs, etc.). Accountable for the right people in the right teams to deliver on our tech strategy. Leverage coaching techniques in all team activity to drive a higher quality design and deployment of technical products and services. Financial & Vendor Management, Risk & Governance Carry the ‘one stop shop’ accountability for all risk associated with architectural decision making (from ideation to deployment). Manage & Apply the organization risk & governance frameworks. Ensure decisions on solution design are aligned to Group guidelines & are sustainable for the enterprise. Proactively involve / engage chapter & guild leads in product design & infrastructure decision making, applying an enterprise wide lens to product & service development. Manage all vendor selection processes & take full accountability for all related commercial impact. Negotiate best fit contracts for the organization at an enterprise level and align decision making to our key business principles of scalability, resilience, captivity etc. Education Postgraduate Degrees and Professional Qualifications: Computer and Information Science Absa Bank Limited is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer. In compliance with the Employment Equity Act 55 of 1998, preference will be given to suitable candidates from designated groups whose appointments will contribute towards achievement of equitable demographic representation of our workforce profile and add to the diversity of the Bank. Absa Bank Limited reserves the right not to make an appointment to the post as advertised