Solution Architect | DISA-ADA-SA-JHB-0080

Solution Architect

Who We Need

ADA is looking for an experienced Solution Architect who can operate as a trusted technical authority across the business. This is a company-level role: rather than being fully embedded in one project or customer, the Solution Architect will consult across multiple projects, clients and strategic initiatives while remaining close enough to delivery to guide implementation and quality.

At this stage of your career, you are expected to have demonstrated that you:

• Can be fully trusted with technical [Employer]-making and architectural direction.
• Can balance technical requirements, delivery constraints and a project’s business objectives.
• Contribute to improving ADA’s technical landscape, engineering practices and reusable capability.
• Actively build your own professional brand and the [Employer] Inc. brand internally and within the broader technology community.

Key Responsibilities

• Architecture & Consulting: Provide architecture leadership across multiple engagements; translate business needs into scalable, secure and maintainable solutions; assess existing systems; define target architectures and make pragmatic technology decisions.
• Implementation: Remain hands-on enough to validate architecture through delivery, support critical implementation decisions and guide teams through complex technical challenges.
• Technical Leadership: Mentor Technical Leads and senior engineers, provide technical escalation support and raise engineering capability across teams.
• Standards & Quality: Act as a custodian of delivery quality by defining and governing architecture standards, technical documentation, design decisions and engineering quality gates.
• Evaluate architectural trade-offs and recommend technologies based on business requirements rather than technology preference.
• Produce and maintain solution architecture documentation, technical diagrams and architecture decisions.

• Presales: Shape solution approaches during proposals and client engagements, validate feasibility, identify technical risks and support estimation and solution positioning.
• Community & Brand: Contribute to thought leadership, technical communities, internal forums and external industry engagement to strengthen the [Employer] Inc. technical brand.
• Training & Capability Development: Help define technical learning priorities, contribute to training content and support the development of architects, Technical Leads and engineers.
• Research & Development: Allocate time to emerging technologies, architectural patterns and practical experimentation that can improve client solutions and internal capability.

Technical Scope

• The role is technology-agnostic and requires broad architectural depth across modern custom development and digital solutions. Key areas include:
• Custom development: Java, .NET/C#, React, Angular and JavaScript/TypeScript.
• Architecture: enterprise applications, microservices, modular and event-driven architectures, APIs, integration patterns, distributed systems and security-by-design.
• Cloud & infrastructure: Microsoft Azure, cloud-native architecture, containers, networking, identity, scalability, resilience, monitoring and observability; AWS exposure is advantageous.
• Data & integration: SQL, relational databases, data modelling, REST APIs, synchronous/asynchronous integration and application data architecture.
• DevOps & engineering quality: CI/CD, source control, automated testing, Infrastructure as Code, deployment strategies and technical quality gates.
• Emerging technologies: AI-enabled applications, AI service integration, low-code platforms and application modernisation.

How you work

• Make technology choices based on business problems, not platform preference.
• Evaluate trade-offs across cost, speed, scalability, security, maintainability and operational complexity.
• Communicate architecture clearly to both technical and business stakeholders.
• Provide direction without becoming a bottleneck, enabling teams to make sound decisions independently.

Experience and Capability

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, Computer Engineering, Information Systems or a related technical discipline.
• Typically 7–10+ years’ experience across software engineering, technical leadership and solution architecture.
• Strong foundation in custom application development and modern enterprise architecture.
• Experience designing solutions across frontend, backend, integration, data, cloud and infrastructure concerns.
• Strong Azure architecture experience; AWS exposure advantageous.
• Experience providing technical governance, reviewing designs and guiding multidisciplinary engineering teams.
• Strong consulting and stakeholder engagement capability, including the ability to operate across several clients and initiatives.
• Experience supporting presales, technical assessments, estimation or solution shaping is advantageous.

What success looks like

• Projects make sound, consistent technical decisions with fewer late-stage architecture issues.
• Technical Leads and engineering teams become stronger and more self-sufficient through effective mentorship.
• Reusable standards, patterns and lessons are shared across ADA rather than remaining within individual projects.
• Presales solutions are technically credible, commercially pragmatic and aligned to client outcomes.
• [Employer] Inc. strengthens its reputation for high-quality engineering, architecture and modern digital solution delivery.

Originally posted on [Employer]