Lead Architect

Lead Architect 

Job Purpose 

Bajaj Finserv Web is a critical component of the company's omnipresence strategy. You will be working with India's largest NBFC's web technology stack, encompassing over 40 business lines and 230+ features, with nearly 500 million traffic and managing over 30,000 webpages. It is an integrated platform offering a portfolio of products covering payments, cards, wallets, loans, deposits, mutual funds, and loans on lifestyle products, ranging from consumer durables to home furnishings.

The Technical Architect will lead a major implementation project, collaborating with various POD teams to ensure timely delivery and utilizing technologies like ReactJS, SolidJS and NextJS as frontend frameworks, AWS/Azure, and DevOps, while focusing on customer segmentation and personalization.

Duties and Responsibilities 

1. Technology Architecture and Roadmap- Create a robust Architecture for the new Web Platform considering non-functional aspects including Security, Performance, Scalability, and Availability.
- Lead, define, maintain, and own platform and solution architecture for the Customer Facing Asset within wider IT Compliance.
- Ensure that the roadmap includes new and upcoming features of core base products such as Node JS, React JS, Solid JS, Next JS, AWS, DevOps pipeline, Adobe Target, Adobe and Google Analytics, NewRelic, Akamai, and various other frameworks.
- Create a validation framework to measure and report the effectiveness of Architecture.
- Foster a culture of industry benchmarking before adopting new products/frameworks and define a robust roadmap and evolution for the One Web Platform.
- Collaborate with IT, Marketing, Data teams, and partners to create a sustainable and achievable platform framework.
- Develop a strong understanding of backend infrastructure and systems while delivering a dynamic, personalized, and customer-first integrated asset.
- Define the Security Architecture of the platform, including Video hosting, Caching, Security features like DOS, in collaboration with partners.
- Execute POCs to validate technology roadmaps, feasibility, and scalable, interoperable solutions that fit the ecosystem and are cost-effective.
- Create a holistic auto-scalable and highly available environment across all key components, including Node servers.
- Leverage and sponsor innovation work internally and externally to introduce novel technical capabilities into the platform.
- Foster a culture of innovation and engineering excellence via modern practices, open source, open standards, and collaboration.
- Ensure digital assets perform optimally year-round, including peak sales, by recommending robust technology frameworks, infrastructure, and data processes.
- Analyze data such as drop-offs and bounce rates to improve process flows and develop tools for online customer engagement.
- Partner with Engineering teams to create an optimal Infrastructure Developer Experience, from IDE and CI/CD to IaaS provisioning and Cloud Native Service onboarding frameworks.

2. Leadership and Team Development- Add strategic value through competition mapping and adopting best practices.
- Scout the technology landscape to adopt emerging solutions and maintain innovation.
- Participate in project presentations with priorities, timelines, and quarterly plans for leadership sign-off.
- Inspire and influence others to think differently, solve problems, and seize opportunities.
- Work cross-functionally to set and achieve targets for cross-selling.
- Determine individual training needs and development plans to build expertise and skills.
- Set objectives, conduct reviews, and close appraisal processes for the team as per timelines.
- Ensure high employee engagement and morale through effective management interventions and emotional intelligence.
- Establish performance expectations and regularly review team member performance.
- Identify and create development opportunities to enhance technical knowledge.
- Work towards customer business outcomes, ensuring alignment between delivery activities and business objectives.

3. Professional Experience and Qualification years of experience leading Technical Deliveries, preferably in Fintech or Ecommerce.
- Experience leading teams of 25+ people across multiple domains and skills.
- FinTech or Ecommerce experience is desirable.
- In-depth understanding of Adobe Experience Manager and ability to lead developers and architects.
- Hands-on skills in Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, Launch/DTM, Adobe Campaign, SEO, CDN.
- Strong hands-on experience with mainline programming and scripting languages such as Java.
- Hands-on experience architecting websites using the MERN stack.
- Experience building and managing release systems, code merging, promotion, and CI/CD workflows and tools.
- Relevant experience with Agile and Scaled Agile frameworks, DevSecOps, and continuous improvement mindsets.
- Solid understanding of eCommerce and Digital Marketing landscape, with strong business acumen.
- Understanding of security, risk, and compliance management processes in IT solutions delivery.
- Able to lead, mentor, and guide a team of developers and Architects.

Key Decisions / Dimensions- Recommendations on integrating existing architecture with Node JS and React JS or Solid JS to build optimal solutions for high traffic with minimal infrastructure.
- Development workflow definition to address major gaps and bandwidth challenges.
- Onboarding/offboarding partners and internal resources based on POD requirements for deliverables.
- Development and implementation of training programs for freshers and employees to support career growth.
- Development build checklist for every deployment to maintain production server hygiene.
- API structure and integration approaches for Mobile and Web Apps.
- Ensuring common content across both App and Web platforms to reduce redundancy.
- Product and technology evaluation to meet business requirements.
- Financial evaluation for the technology unit within the Marketing department.
- All decisions towards ensuring quality delivery and release of quality products.

Major Challenges- Defining innovative architecture that integrates seamlessly with Marketing product suites and tools.
- Building data-driven architecture to utilize user behavioral and transactional data for improved user acquisition experiences.
- Understanding new finance products and capabilities to build business-driven solutions in collaboration with data and marketing products.
- Continuous evolution and adaptation of systems and technologies within minimal time to manage growing business volumes.
- Constant training for new hires and joiners for optimal results.

Required Qualifications and Experience 

a) Qualifications- B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering

b) Work Experience- Minimum 9-12 years of experience in software development with a strong focus on web content management systems, particularly React JS, Solid JS, Node JS, and DevOps practices.
- Industry knowledge of finance and experience in leading technical deliveries.
- Proficiency in Java/JEE, React JS, Solid JS, Node JS, Akamai.
- Strong knowledge of HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript and related frameworks (React JS, Solid JS).
- Experience with frontend technologies like Bootstrap, , ReactJS, Handlebars, Grunt, Next, CSS3, HTML5, and jQuery.
- Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure) and DevOps tools (Jenkins, Maven). Strong knowledge of cloud-native approaches and platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP).
- Strong leadership skills with the ability to manage and mentor development teams.
- Project management experience, including planning, estimation, and leading all aspects of projects (frontend, backend, QA, project management).
- Strong understanding of infrastructure concepts, including load balancers (ELB), Apache setup, CDN, disaster recovery, and instance capacity recommendations.
- Quality assurance experience, including continuous integration (Bamboo/Jenkins/Git/BitBucket/Cloud Manager), SonarQube, code reviews, code formatters, automation testing, etc.
- Experience with mobile app development and microservices-based architecture.
- Leading solutions considering quality properties like SEO, accessibility (A, AA, AAA), monitoring (Squid, Nagios, Zabbix, Ganglia, App Dynamics, New Relic), scalability, security, performance, and responsive architecture.
- Good knowledge of Adobe I/O Runtime and Adobe I/O Events.