Enterprise Architecture Lead

About the Role

Join a pioneering UAE financial organization building a digital-first, AI-driven institution from inception. As Enterprise Architecture Lead, you will shape and govern the technology, data, and AI architectural framework critical to establishing a secure, scalable, AI-native financial entity with substantial institutional backing and ambitious long-term goals.

Key Responsibilities

• Maintain the enterprise technology landscape including business capability models, application inventories, platform maps, target architectures, and transition strategies.
• Design AI agent frameworks ensuring governance over orchestration, identities, permissions, and human oversight.
• Architect the intelligence layer with AI gateways, model and agent registries, evaluation systems, guardrails, and feedback loops.
• Define integration architecture standards such as APIs, event-driven approaches, streaming platforms, schema governance, and agent protocols (e.g., MCP).
• Develop and sustain machine-readable enterprise architecture models to support automated governance and AI-enhanced architectural decisions.
• Create reference frameworks for resilience, disaster recovery, system observability, identity management, audit trails, and enterprise data flows.
• Lead technology selections, governance processes, vendor reviews, and critically assess system integrator designs to ensure compliance with enterprise standards.
• Implement and enforce architecture standards across multi-vendor environments, managing deviations and remediation efforts.
• Support regulatory compliance activities including licensing, audits, operational resilience, and AI governance through robust architectural controls and documentation.

Experience and Skills Required

• Over 10 years in enterprise architecture roles within banking or financial services, specifically overseeing greenfield builds or large-scale transformations beyond solution-level design.
• Proven track record in production-level AI/ML and agentic system architecture, including deployment platforms, orchestration, evaluation, and governance.
• Extensive experience in designing bank-scale integration architectures, both event-driven and API-based, and enforcing standards among multiple vendors and integrators.
• Strong competence with modern cloud architectures, preferably Azure, including hybrid/private cloud solutions and compliance with data residency requirements.
• Experience in regulated environments supporting licensing, audits, model risk assessments, and operational resilience standards.
• Demonstrated ability to navigate complex, politically sensitive technology decisions involving executive leadership.
• Adaptability to fast-paced startup conditions, building and executing enterprise technology roadmaps.
• Excellent stakeholder engagement and negotiation capabilities.

Technical Expertise

• AI and agent architecture: gateways for large language models, model registries, orchestration frameworks, tool integration, evaluation, and guardrail tooling (LLMOps).
• Enterprise architecture disciplines: capability mapping, application portfolio and target/transition state modelling as machine-readable assets.
• Integration technologies: event streaming platforms (e.g., Kafka), API management, schema registries, standards such as OpenAPI/AsyncAPI/CloudEvents, agent integration protocols like MCP, and non-human workload authentication mechanisms.
• Cloud and infrastructure: Azure landing zones, Kubernetes platforms, resiliency and disaster recovery designs, and infrastructure as code methodologies.
• Responsible AI and model risk: explainability, auditable decision trails, control and permissioning models aligned with AI regulation in banking.

Educational Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a closely related field.
• Postgraduate qualifications in relevant areas are a plus.
• Certifications such as Azure Solutions Architect Expert are considered advantageous.