Business Analyst – Solution Design and Integrations at Co-operative Bank of Kenya
Are you looking for an employer who promotes individual excellence and mutual respect in a team-driven culture with a key focus on social empowerment?
The Co-operative Bank of Kenya, “The Kingdom Bank” is the place for those looking to new horizons.
Do you possess a deep understanding of architectural concepts and the fundamentals of good software design and the ability to deliver innovative solutions and make sound qualitative judgments on appropriateness and the effectiveness of solution approaches?
If yes, then this the excellent opportunity for you to join the Bank and specifically the ICT team, during an exciting transformation season for the Bank.
Reporting to Head – Business Change Management, this position focuses on the conversion of business requirements into the architecture and design that ultimately constitute the blueprint for the IT solution to be developed.
When assigned to projects, formulates and evolves pattern-based designs and works collaboratively with business/process analysts and development team to create solutions that fulfill business requirements while being robust, maintainable, standards conformant, and aligned with enterprise architecture.
The Role
Specifically, the successful jobholder will be required to:
- Participate in discussions with Business Analysts and domain experts to determine requirements and model business processes and assesses architectural requirements/constraints such as security, scalability, performance, availability, and redundancy. Ensures requirements can be met at an acceptable cost and with acceptable tradeoffs. Examines existing business models and flows of data, discussing findings with the business, and evaluating system specifications for business requirements.
- Ensure physical and logical designs fit within our enterprise architectural framework and conforms to accepted architectural standards.
- Formulate evolved pattern-based designs appropriate for the solution with a clear separation of concerns, e.g. presentation and data access patterns, service/application layers, domain model, infrastructure services, etc. Grow and evolve the design, ensuring the integrity of the design is maintained over the course of a project. Communicates and socializes the design across the team and fosters an environment of shared goals, collective ownership, and collaboration in building a design strategy.
- Provide solution design and integration strategies, in the form of standards documentation, examples, training and consultancy. Ensure designs and implementations fulfill not only functional needs but also non-functional needs such as maintainability, plug ability, extendibility, testability, stability, configurability and supportability.
- Identify necessary interactions with other applications/services and define message exchange patterns, data contracts, and service-level agreements (SLA).
- Encourage adoption and adherence to good development practices such as well factored, ‘intention revealing’ code, comprehensive automated tests, frequent check-ins, continuous integration, collaboration, continuous review/feedback, etc.
- Produce additional technical documentation such as high-level design, support documentation and data dictionaries, based on need and value, and ensures all artifacts are placed under version control and organized in accordance with agreed standards.
- Design integration components at both the functional and technical level for implementation on various systems like SOA/ESB, core banking, alternate channels, and enterprise systems and sets standards for integration design and development and adheres to these standards. Provides feedback on standards and seek to improve these where opportunities arise.
- Support the assembly, configuration and deployment of the integration components into test environments including the execution of validation and regression tests.
- Co-ordinate and perform software and integration testing, and rectification of application systems, in a large complex environment.
- Participates in governance/stewardship of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) artifacts and definitions, including enterprise services, enterprise data, business events/topics, contracts and associated publish/subscribe participants.
- Ensure stakeholder relationship management: Develop and maintain one or more defined communication channels and/or stakeholder groups, acting as a single point of contact. Gathers information from the customer to understand their needs (demand management) and detailed requirements.
- Monitor the market to gain knowledge and understanding of currently emerging technologies. Identifies new and emerging hardware and software technologies and products based on own area of expertise, assesses their relevance and potential value to the organization, contributes to briefings of staff and management.
Desired Skills and Experience
- BSC in Computer Science, Information Technology and/or related fields.
- Project management or Business analysis professional training.
- 4 years’ professional experience in IT solution design.
- Solid grasp of design patterns and principles, particularly Object-Oriented Design (OOD), Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Event-Driven Architecture (EDA).
- Excellent software development skills – Java, Spring framework, JBoss, Websphere Application Server, C#, Oracle databases, SQL server, DevOps, SOA/ESB, Cloud based solutions, Android, REST, XML/RPC, CORBA, Business process management (BPM), Active MQ, Kannel
- Experience on systems like Mobile money transfer, USSD/SMS, ERP, CRM, core banking system and other systems in a financial services ecosystem.
- Familiarity with Unified Modeling Language (UML) and possesses knowledge of ancillary technologies in use at, such as Java, MS SQL server, Eclipse, Oracle, or an ability to quickly learn any of these if needed.
- Possesses a strong customer service attitude, excellent communication skills, exhibits a passion for learning and continuous improvement. Takes responsibility for acquiring new skills and broadening knowledge
- Exhibits a commitment to the utilization of defined standards and processes with entrepreneurial flair with strong business acumen.
- High level of mathematical aptitude and strong problem-solving skills, logical, analytical and investigative mind, together with creative abilities, A wild duck – out of the box thinker.
- Ability to handle complex information with accuracy and attention to detail.
How to Apply:
If you are confident that you fit the role and person profile and you are keen to add value to your career then please forward your application enclosing detailed Curriculum Vitae to jobs@co-opbank.co.ke indicating the job reference number BA/BCM/2016 by 31st March, 2016.
