Solution Architect (with Business Analysis Expertise)

Role purpose. We need a Solution Architect who can turn business requirements into solution designs and then defend those designs in front of development, infrastructure and integration teams. The role owns the technical direction of the solution. It is not a documentation role. You will be expected to question vendor and internal proposals, find weaknesses before delivery starts, and say plainly when a design does not meet the requirement, the security standard or the budget. KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Own the end-to-end solution design across application, data, integration, security and infrastructure layers .
• Produce architecture documents, data flow diagrams, sequence diagrams, and integration and API specifications.
• Select architecture patterns and justify the choices, including trade-offs, cost and risk. Technical challenge and design assurance
• Review designs from developers, vendors and infrastructure teams, and challenge them on feasibility, scalability, performance, security and supportability.
• Review integration approaches (REST, event-driven, batch, file-based) and test them against failure scenarios, volumes and dependencies.
• Validate sizing, environment and hosting assumptions (Dev/SIT/UAT/Production, cloud and on-premises) with the infrastructure teams.
• Identify technical debt, bottlenecks and single points of failure in existing systems and recommend fixes.
• Check that delivered work matches the approved design and raise deviations early. Business analysis
• Elicit and document business, functional, non-functional and technical requirements (BRD, FRD, TRD, user stories).
• Trace every requirement to a design element and to a test case.
• Run workshops with business owners and translate their needs into clear technical deliverables .
• Support impact assessment on scope, effort and timeline when requirements change. Stakeholder and vendor coordination
• Act as the technical point of contact between business owners, delivery teams and third-party vendors.
• Review vendor proposals and technical responses against signed scope and requirements.
• Advise project and delivery managers on technical risks, dependencies and decisions that need escalation. 8+ years in enterprise IT, with at least 4 years as a Solution Architect, Technical Architect or equivalent.
• Hands-on delivery of API-led and system integration projects in enterprise or government environments.
• Practical background in business analysis, including requirements engineering and stakeholder management. Technical skills
• API design: REST, OpenAPI/Swagger, JSON/XML, webhooks, and event-driven patterns.
• Integration platforms and API gateways, plus authentication and authorisation (OAuth2, SSO, UAE PASS or similar).
• Cloud and infrastructure fundamentals: networking, environments, availability, DR, and security architecture.
• Relational databases, SQL and data mapping.
• UML, BPMN 2.0 and sequence diagrams, using tools such as Visio, Lucidchart or Enterprise Architect.
• Agile delivery in Jira or Azure DevOps. Certifications
• Mandatory: TOGAF Foundation.
• Mandatory (one of): AWS Solutions Architect (Associate or above), or Azure AZ-305.
• Preferred: CBAP or PMI-PBA. Languages
• Arabic: native or fluent, for business and stakeholder communication.
• English: fluent, business and technical