Director, Enterprise Architecture & Integrations NGO Job IRC Nairobi, Kenya

Major Responsibilities

Architecture and Standards (30%)

• Own enterprise integration patterns and technical standards across the application portfolio, and set the architecture decisions that span core platforms (D365, Workday, ServiceNow, Box, M365 and related systems).
• Establish and maintain standards for how applications are built, integrated, and supported, and hold delivery teams accountable to them.
• Apply a configure-before-develop standard so custom engineering is the exception rather than the default, and provide architecture guidance on new solution requests and platform changes.
• Document the integration and architecture boundaries that have historically been managed informally, so the knowledge is held by the organization rather than by individuals.

Integration and Custom Applications (25%)

• Own the integration layer across the portfolio: patterns, tooling, and the standards that keep integrations maintainable and observable.
• Set technical direction for custom application development, ensuring it follows the same architecture and standards as the rest of the portfolio.
• Partner with platform owners to design integrations that fit the broader architecture rather than solving one system at a time.

Team Leadership and Operations (15%)

• Lead and manage the teams closest to integration and custom application development, including the integration and custom apps team, the Drupal team, and the Azure platform (application hosting) engineers.
• Set priorities, manage workload, and develop team leads and engineers.
• Manage the team budget and track spend against plan.
• Support the recruitment of technical staff as the team evolves.

Cross-Functional Coordination (15%)

• Coordinate with the Head of AI and T4P Engineering on the architecture and integration boundaries between AI and engineering initiatives and the enterprise application portfolio.
• Partner with the Enterprise Applications leadership team to align architecture decisions with portfolio priorities and roadmaps.
• Coordinate with the data team, including its Director of Analytics, Architecture and Engineering, on data architecture and integration boundaries across the portfolio.
• Coordinate with GIS and Infrastructure on shared platform boundaries, including Azure, to clarify roles and responsibilities across teams.
• Work with the Director, AI Platforms and Digital Workplace on the boundaries between the digital workplace stack and the enterprise application portfolio.

Governance and Documentation (15%)

• Maintain documentation of architecture decisions, integration patterns, and technical standards.
• Ensure architecture and integration work aligns with organizational policies, data privacy requirements, and the IRC’s governance frameworks.
• Surface architecture risk and technical debt plainly, and bring open questions forward rather than presenting closed plans.
• Establish enterprise architecture into the organization’s operations and governance: define architecture principles, set up a review process and decision rights for architecture choices, and embed those into how solutions are proposed, funded, and approved across the portfolio.

Required Experience and Skills

Strategy and Leadership

• 8+ years of experience in IT, enterprise applications, or architecture roles, with at least 3 years in a leadership position managing a team.
• Experience setting architecture direction and technical standards in an enterprise environment.
• Ability to translate organizational needs into clear integration patterns and architecture decisions.
• Track record of managing budgets for technology work.

Architecture and Integration

• Deep working knowledge of enterprise integration patterns, API management, and integration tooling across a multi-platform environment.
• Strong working knowledge of enterprise platforms such as ERP (D365 F&O), HCM (Workday), ITSM (ServiceNow), and collaboration platforms (M365, Box).
• Experience owning technical standards and holding delivery teams accountable to them.
• Comfort assessing build-versus-configure tradeoffs and steering work away from unnecessary custom development.
• Demonstrated experience establishing enterprise architecture governance: defining architecture principles, standing up an architecture review process, and embedding architecture decision rights into how an organization prioritizes and funds technology work.

Custom Development and Delivery

• Hands-on background in application development and integration delivery. This role is expected to work hands-on at the start, designing integrations, reviewing code, and troubleshooting failures directly, and to shift toward oversight as the team grows.
• Experience leading custom application and web teams (Drupal experience a plus).

Communication

• Strong written and verbal communication skills; able to explain architecture decisions clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Comfortable surfacing open questions and risk plainly.

Preferred

• Experience in a nonprofit, international development, or humanitarian sector IT environment.
• Experience coordinating architecture boundaries across infrastructure and applications teams.
• Experience with API management platforms (e.g., Azure APIM, Apigee).
• Experience with event-driven and messaging architectures (e.g., Azure Service Bus, Kafka).
• Familiarity with cloud-native integration tooling (e.g., Azure Functions, Logic Apps, iPaaS solutions).
• Experience building on serverless and microservices patterns, not only monolithic architectures.

Organization

The following positions report into this role:

• Integration and Custom Apps Team Lead
• Drupal Team (day-to-day led by the Drupal manager)
• Azure Platform (Application Hosting) Engineers

How to Apply

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