Enterprise Architect

Heirs Technologies Limited empowers Africa’s Digital Transformation through innovative and locally tailored solutions. We partner to help build your business on technology designed for Africa and benchmarked against global standards, whether you are modernizing operations, strengthening resilience, or accelerating growth. We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: Enterprise Architect

Location: Lagos / Hybrid (Remote and In Person)

Job Type: Contract The Role The Enterprise Architect is the most senior technical architect on the platform — and this role is defined by genuine depth across every architectural domain, not seniority alone. You are a practitioner-architect: someone who can design the cloud architecture, the data architecture, the network architecture, the security architecture, and the on-premises integration architecture — any of them, hands-on, alone — but who also has the breadth, the judgment, and the executive presence to sit above all of them and hold the whole together. In lean mode, you are the architecture function. You do the work — translating business requirements, regulatory mandates, and end-user needs into an overarching technical vision, and from that vision into the individual architectures the platform is built on. When domain specialists join — a Sr. Cloud Architect, a Database Architect, others over time — you shift into a governance and direction role: setting the architectural intent, reviewing their outputs, ensuring coherence across domains, and freeing your specialists to go as deep as the platform needs. You can always go back to doing it yourself. You never stop being capable of it. This is also a role that operates at the highest levels of the organisation. You will engage with the Platform Director, the GCTIO, and the institution's senior technology and business leadership — comfortably, confidently, and with the political intelligence to navigate complex stakeholder environments and earn trust at that level. What You'll Do Business &

Requirements

Translation — Engage directly with business stakeholders, product leadership, and institutional counterparts to understand business objectives, end-user requirements, regulatory constraints, and institutional priorities — and translate them into a clear, coherent architectural vision. This is the foundation of everything else. The architecture must serve the business, not the other way around, and you are the person who ensures that connection is never lost. Overarching Architectural Vision — Own the platform's end-to-end technical architecture — defining the structural principles, integration patterns, and technology standards that govern how the entire platform is designed across cloud, data, network, security, and on-premises layers. Ensure the architecture is coherent as a whole, not just in its individual parts, and that it is designed to serve hundreds of millions of users without fundamental rework as the platform scales. Domain Architecture — Design and own the individual domain architectures the platform is built on — cloud infrastructure, data and database architecture, network and security architecture, on-premises integration architecture — either directly in lean team configurations, or by setting architectural direction and reviewing specialist output when domain architects are in place. In either mode, the quality and coherence of every domain architecture is your responsibility. On-Premises & Core Banking Integration Architecture — Own the architectural design of the platform's integration with on-premises infrastructure and the institution's core banking systems — defining integration patterns, connectivity architecture, data exchange standards, and the security controls that govern how the digital platform and legacy systems interoperate reliably and safely. Understand on-premises network architecture, data centre connectivity, and the unique constraints and risks of integrating a cloud-native digital platform with mission-critical enterprise systems. Architecture Governance — When leading a team of domain architects, own the architecture governance process — chairing the Architecture Review Board (ARB), ensuring all significant technical decisions are reviewed and documented, and maintaining a living library of architectural decision records (ADRs). Ensure that architectural standards are actively enforced — not aspirational — and that no major technical decision is made without structured review and explicit sign-off. Platform Standards & Engineering Patterns — Define and own the master set of platform engineering standards and architectural patterns — covering microservices design, API contracts, event-driven messaging, data access, IaC, containerisation, security controls, and observability. Work with the Platform Manager to ensure these standards are communicated clearly, enforced consistently, and evolved as the platform grows. Standards must be specific enough to prevent drift and opinionated enough to be actually useful. Non-Functional Requirements & Resilience — Define, own, and validate the platform's non-functional requirements — including availability (targeting 99.99%), scalability, performance under load, security, recoverability, and regulatory compliance. Ensure every architectural decision is assessed against these NFRs and that no design trade-off is made without understanding its impact on system quality. Own the platform's resilience architecture — fault isolation, graceful degradation, and recovery at every layer. Technology Strategy & Governance — Own the platform's technology strategy and approved technology catalogue — making principled build-vs-buy decisions, evaluating new technologies and cloud capabilities, and ensuring that technology choices are deliberate, well-documented, and aligned with the platform's long-term direction. Govern the technical architecture of e