Lead Architect

Job description / Role

Job description

The lead architect is responsible for guiding the tribe's overall architecture and technology strategy, ensuring it aligns with long-term business goals. They play a crucial role in developing a unified architectural framework that supports the organization's objectives, providing direction on technical decisions that enhance scalability, security, and efficiency. The lead architect collaborates closely with various departments to ensure that technology solutions are cohesive, future-proof, and designed to drive sustained business growth, keeping in mind the primary objective of serving the tribe's product and its overall development, execution, and maturity.

A key aspect of the role involves designing and implementing systems that are not only high-performing and secure but also capable of supporting evolving business needs. The lead architect ensures that all architectural designs accommodate both immediate project requirements and long-term scalability, providing a balance between addressing current demands, preparing for future growth, and enabling teams to build robust, scalable systems that are adaptable to changing business environments.

This role requires double-hatting between solutioning both front-end and back-end wealth domain technologies and will report into two matrix managers - one each in digital products and business platforms.

Core objectives:

• Deliver complete and self-sufficient solutions and/or design documents within agreed timelines.
• Improve efficiency of the architecture design workflow or via automation.
• Contribute to building reliable, resilient, and secure (RRS) platforms.
• Deliver education workshops to chapter and tribe members.
• Coach, mentor, and upskill architects to help them become unified architects.
• Create/review solutions that follow or define reusable blueprints/reference architecture.
• Invest time in improving personal and professional skills via completion of technical and soft skill programs, stretch assignments, and coaching/mentoring.
• Learn artificial intelligence concepts and technologies (e.g., generative AI, model context protocol, AI assistants like Claude).

Skills & requirements:

• Strong experience in banking, accounting, payments, or settlements.
• Prior exposure to the wealth domain such as capital markets, funds, ETFs, or equities is preferred.
• The ideal candidate should demonstrate a strong will to learn and adapt to new domains.
• Developing and designing requirements for applications spanning the wealth domain (backend and frontend) and its associated ecosystem in consultation with involved internal departments and subsidiaries.
• Utilize best practices for application design, user interface, integration touch points, and overall architecture.
• Ensure that all designs are created according to internal ENBD development best practices and based on user journeys, wireframes, and architectural patterns used by ENBD.
• 5+ years of experience designing apps, microservices, and APIs.
• Must have participated and/or led at least three projects designing and architecting apps in conjunction with a microservices and API-based ecosystem.

Technical competencies

• Experience with building end-to-end design patterns and solutions.
• Experience integrating the ecosystem with technologies including but not limited to mobile apps, microservices, containers/cloud-native technologies, event streams, APIs, message brokers, and the like.
• Deep understanding of architectural patterns like microservices, APIs, and mobile app development.
• Ability to build solutions that are highly scalable, reliable, resilient, and secure with a strong focus on user experience.
• Incorporating cyber and information security controls into products via methods such as data classification, regulatory requirements consideration, threat modelling, and security requirements.
• Good experience of enterprise architecture tools (Enterprise Architect), data modeling tools.
• Decent experience working with artificial intelligence technology that may help enable the business and/or the tribe to become more productive.

Behavioral competencies

• Delivery focused while ensuring the right balance of customer experience, business requirements, performance, reliability, and security.
• Very strong stakeholder management skills.
• High energy, enthusiasm, and passion.
• Excellent analytical and critical thinking skills.
• Excellent time management and expectation management skills.
• Autonomous decision-making ability with minimal guidance.
• High learning potential.
• Ability to coach and mentor associate/junior architects.
• Act as a trusted advisor to C-level executives, influencing technology investment decisions and ensuring that technological advancements align with business strategies.

About us

Meet the leading banking group in the region.

Emirates NBD, the leading banking group in the MENAT region, was formed on 19 June 1963, when H.H. Late Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum signed the charter of incorporation of the National Bank of Dubai (NBD) which became the first national bank established in Dubai and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). With the blessings of H.H. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, NBD merged with Emirates Bank International (EBI) on 06 March 2007, to form Emirates NBD, the largest banking group in the region by assets.

On 16 October 2007, the shares of Emirates NBD were officially listed on the Dubai Financial Market (DFM). The merger between EBI and NBD to create Emirates NBD became a regional consolidation blueprint for the banking and finance sector as it combined the second and fourth largest banks in the UAE to form a banking champion capable of delivering enhanced value across corporate, retail, Islamic, investment, and private banking, global markets and treasury, asset management, and brokerage operations throughout the region.