Head, Solution Architecture & Standards Office
About the
Role
The Head, Solution
Architecture & Standards Office owns the technology architecture,
standards, and governance framework that ensures every development initiative
across Polaris Bank's digital and retail banking arms is scalable, secure, and
well-integrated. This is a leadership and governance role: you will set
direction, define standards, and provide architectural oversight across three
specialist domains — Solution Architecture, Security Architecture, and
Integration & API Architecture — working through and with specialist
architects and leads in each area, rather than executing all specialist work
personally.
Key
Responsibilities
Governance
& Standards
- Define and maintain the enterprise
architecture framework, technology standards, and design principles
applied across all development initiatives
- Chair architecture review boards;
approve or escalate designs that deviate from standards
- Own the technical governance process,
ensuring traceability between business requirements and architectural
decisions
Solution
Architecture
- Oversee the design of end-to-end
solutions for major business initiatives, ensuring architectural
integrity, scalability, and alignment with enterprise standards
- Guide the application of microservices
architecture, domain-driven design, and cloud architecture patterns across
teams
- Ensure solution designs are
maintainable and support long-term platform evolution
Security
Architecture
- Set secure-by-design standards and
oversee their application across all solution designs
- Ensure threat modeling, identity &
access management design, and cryptographic standards are consistently
applied
- Partner with Information Security to
ensure architecture decisions meet regulatory and compliance requirements
- Oversee remediation of
architecture-level vulnerabilities identified through security assessments
Integration
& API Architecture
- Set standards for integration
patterns, API design, API gateway usage, and middleware architecture
- Oversee API lifecycle governance to
ensure consistency, reusability, and performance across the API portfolio
- Guide adoption of event-driven
architecture patterns for high-throughput, real-time use cases
Core
Competencies
- Enterprise architecture leadership and
technical governance
- Working knowledge across solution,
security, and integration architecture disciplines (deep expertise in at
least one is expected; working fluency across the others to lead
specialist teams credibly)
- Stakeholder management across
engineering, security, product, and compliance functions
- Ability to translate business
requirements into architectural strategy
Familiarity
With Tools (used by the function, not a personal daily requirement)
Enterprise
architecture tools (BizzDesign, Sparx EA), Draw.io/Lucidchart, Confluence,
JIRA; OWASP tools, Burp Suite, IAM platforms; API gateways, Swagger/OpenAPI,
Postman, Mulesoft, Apache Camel, Kafka, RabbitMQ
Requirements
Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science,
Engineering, or related field; relevant certifications (TOGAF, AWS/Azure
Architect, CISSP, or equivalent) an advantage
- Demonstrated track record leading
architecture functions in a regulated industry, ideally banking/financial
services