Head, Solution Architecture & Standards Office at Polaris Bank Limited

Polaris Bank was established by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on September 21, 2018 to offer commercial banking services to the Nigerian public. The bank commenced services on the same day, having purchased the assets and assumed certain liabilities of the defunct Skye Bank.With a footprint of over 350 branches across the country, Polaris Bank prides itself in delivering exceptional customer experience, leveraging best in class/state of the art Information Communication Technology (ICT). By focusing on ICT solutions across multiple service delivery channels (mobile banking, ATMs, POS and online platforms) Polaris Bank maintains a pivotal role in the Nigerian banking industry, providing customers with simple, convenient and secured banking services.

We are recruiting to fill the position below:

Job Title: Head, Solution Architecture & Standards Office

Location: Lagos
Job Type: Full Time

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

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

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.

Application Closing Date
Not Specified.

How to Apply
Interested and qualified candidates should:
Click here to apply online