About this role
Job Purpose: Responsible for designing and reviewing optimal solution approaches for Retail Banking Group initiatives, ensuring alignment between business requirements and the enterprise technology strategy. This role spans a broad set of responsibilities, including establishing guidance for solution development and review processes, crafting scalable and fit-for-purpose architectures, and overseeing the implementation of low-level designs. Operating across both agile squads and waterfall-managed systems of record, the Solution Architect collaborates closely with cross-functional teams, including business, product, engineering, and technology, to deliver value-driven outcomes that support RBG’s strategic goals. Key Result Areas Key responsibilities include: • Driving the identification and design solutions to meet evolving business needs. • Ensuring RBG architectural governance and adherence to Enterprise Architecture standards throughout the solution and software lifecycle. • Reviewing and supporting engineering teams in building robust, scalable products and platforms. • Drive the adoption of APIs and microservices across retail banking systems, including External APIs for partner integrations & openbanking and internal APIs for modular service orchestration. • Promote reusability and extensibility across retail platforms to accelerate product delivery. • Recommend and oversee modernization initiatives to support evolving retail banking needs. • Guide development teams in adopting and implementing security architecture and standards specific to customer-facing applications. • Ensure non-functional requirements (e.g., performance, availability, scalability) are embedded in all solution designs. • Collaborate with agile delivery models, working closely with product, engineering, and operations teams to ensure timely and scalable solution delivery. • Maintain a retail-focused technology radar to track emerging trends and recommend innovations for continuous improvement. • Provide input into enterprise architecture roadmaps from a retail perspective, ensuring scalability and adaptability. Operating Environment, Framework and Boundaries, Working Relationships • Reporting to Expertise Lead- Architecture • Working with PO and TL to provide solution architecture for business use-cases aligned with Application owners • Working with Engineering team to develop solutions as per defined standard and practices • Working with Infrastructure and Enterprise Architecture teams to ensure the solution fits into the broader IT landscape. Problem Solving • Developing solution to solve business requirements • Application build and deployment issues • End to end diagnosis of digital journeys to back end systems Decision Making Authority & Responsibility • Driving optimal solution approach • Recommending alternate and emerging tech stacks Knowledge, Skills and Experience • Overall 15+ years of application development experience, including 5+ years in Solution Architecture • Having strong knowledge of banking technology with at least 5+ years of experience in solutioning banking applications • Ability to operate within retail digital squads and SOR systems, balancing agile and waterfall methodologies. Senior Stakeholder Management • Expertise in crafting Blueprint, High-level and Low-level designs • Guide all the technology teams in stability of applications and platforms by providing critical inputs on various aspects like performance testing, performance tuning etc • Ability to challenge technology solutions provided by vendors and in-house teams to propose an optimal solution • Ability to identify the hotspots in the current application landscape and provide solutions to rectify • Experience defining functional and non-functional application requirements • Experience in architecting micro-services based applications. • Experience working with online commerce and omni-channel retail business practice. • Expert knowledge of multi cloud stack • Enterprise Architecture certification TOGAF is preferred • Strong knowledge on Domain Driven Design, microservices, API and front-app development tools such as Java, node.js, SpringBoot, API gateway, service mesh, react, ReactNative, .net core and emergent AI technology • Excellent knowledge of SQL and NOSQL database technologies such as SQL, Oracle, MongoDB, etc., • Expertise in OAuth2.0, FAPI2.0, TLS, mTLS, GDPR/PII compliance and related security Architecture standards • Experience working with an Agile DEVOPS development methodology using continuous integration / continuous deployment (CI/CD) processes