Head, Solution Architecture & Standards Office

Polaris Bank Limited | Full time Head, Solution Architecture & Standards Office Lagos, Nigeria | Posted on 07/07/2026

Job Information Department Name Technology / Digital Banking Hiring Manager Talent Acquisition Date Opened 07/07/2026 Job Opening Status In-progress Job Type Full time Industry Banking Work

Experience

• 5+ years

• City Lagos

• Province Lagos

• Country Nigeria

• Postal Code 10001

• About Us

• Polaris Bank Limited is a Tier II Nigerian bank that was established by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on September 21, 2018 to offer commercial banking services, the bank commenced services on the same day, having purchased the assets, and assumed certain of the liabilities, of the defunct Skye Bank.

• We cater to both individuals and corporate entities through carefully designed Retail, SME, Commercial, Corporate banking as well as products for Government MDAs. We also offer self-service/digital channels offerings leveraging technology to bring banking closer to the customer.

• The Bank is a market leader in Revenue Collection, both in the public and private sectors, with collection mandates in about 30 of 36 states in Nigeria including Lagos State.

• We are a key player in financial inclusion and are poised to take banking to the doorsteps of our customers; taking care of the banking needs of different categories of persons and businesses.

• Polaris Bank enjoys significant brand loyalty from its diverse customer base across demographics, industries and sectors.

• Job Description

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