AI Solutions Architect – Kifiya Financial Technologies

About Kifiya

Kifiya is an AI-powered financial and market infrastructure company advancing inclusive economic growth across Africa. The company designs and deploys risk decisioning systems, intelligent financial infrastructure, and market linkage platforms that expand access to credit, insurance, payments, and capital for MSMEs and smallholder farmers.

About the Group Product and Technology Office

The Group Product and Technology organization serves as Kifiya’s enterprise technology backbone. It brings together the centralized Product Office, Intelligent Financial Infrastructure, Intelligent Data Decisioning, Customer Support Excellence, Infrastructure and DevOps, and group-office technology functions.

The organization designs, builds, governs, and operates the technology platforms supporting Kifiya’s AI-enabled financial, agricultural, capital, and market infrastructure solutions.

Position Summary

Kifiya Financial Technologies is seeking an AI Solutions Architect to serve as the company-wide functional authority for solution architecture and AI-by-design adoption.

The role will maintain Kifiya’s target and transition architecture, reference architectures, reusable integration patterns, and Architecture Decision Record discipline. The successful candidate will also establish and govern standards for responsible AI adoption, including data use, human oversight, documentation, evaluation, security, monitoring, and risk controls.

The AI Solutions Architect will chair the Architecture Review Board and determine whether material solution designs conform to approved architecture and AI-by-design standards.

This is a cross-functional architecture leadership role working with Product, Intelligent Financial Infrastructure, Intelligent Data Decisioning, Infrastructure and DevOps, CISO, Data, Security, Risk, Compliance, and other business functions.

Key Responsibilities

1. Target & Transition Architecture

• Maintain current-state, target, and transition architecture.
• Translate technology strategy into architectural principles, capability maps, domain boundaries, and transition plans.
• Define reusable reference architectures for AI, financial infrastructure, data platforms, APIs, events, cloud, hybrid, and on-premise environments.
• Establish architectural guardrails covering security, privacy, resilience, scalability, interoperability, observability, performance, maintainability, and cost efficiency.
• Promote API-first, standards-based, and reusable architecture.
• Identify architectural dependencies, obsolescence risks, capability gaps, and technical debt.
• Recommend modernization and remediation priorities.

2. AI-by-Design & Responsible AI

• Own and continuously improve Kifiya’s AI-by-design standards.
• Define when AI is appropriate versus deterministic or rules-based solutions.
• Establish requirements for:
  • Data use and permitted data sources
  • Human oversight and intervention
  • Explainability and transparency
  • Fairness and bias assessment
  • Privacy and data minimization
  • Model and data provenance
  • Testing and evaluation
  • Monitoring and rollback
  • Documentation and auditability
• Require AI-by-design assessments during discovery for applicable initiatives.
• Develop reusable AI solution patterns.
• Establish additional controls for generative and agentic AI, including prompt manipulation, sensitive-data exposure, tool access, output validation, identity and privilege management, cost controls, and human confirmation for high-impact actions.
• Ensure AI solutions incorporate appropriate monitoring, audit trails, evaluation, and escalation mechanisms.

3. Architecture Governance

• Chair the Architecture Review Board.
• Establish risk- and materiality-based architecture review processes.
• Review material solution designs during discovery and qualification.
• Issue architecture review outcomes such as:
  • Conformant
  • Conformant subject to conditions
  • Further design work required
  • Architecture exception required
• Maintain Architecture Decision Records documenting decisions, alternatives, rationale, consequences, risks, and ownership.
• Maintain an architecture exception register.
• Track closure of architecture conditions and approved exceptions.
• Escalate unresolved material non-conformance to the Group CPTO.

4. Cross-Lane Solution Design & Integration

• Work with Product Managers and Technical Product Managers during discovery.
• Assess feasibility, architecture implications, technical dependencies, non-functional requirements, data requirements, and AI-by-design conditions.
• Define common patterns for APIs, events, data contracts, identity, access, tenancy, integration, configuration, auditability, and observability.
• Promote reuse of common services, models, integrations, and platform capabilities.
• Assess architecture implications of partner-bank, fintech, government, capital-provider, and third-party integrations.
• Facilitate resolution of cross-functional technical design conflicts.

5. Security, Data, Resilience & Compliance

• Partner with the CISO on security-by-design and privacy-by-design.
• Ensure architecture addresses identity, access, encryption, trust boundaries, third-party risk, logging, and auditability.
• Work with the Chief Data Officer on data ownership, classification, stewardship, lineage, retention, privacy, quality, and permitted use.
• Work with Data Science leadership on AI validation, human oversight, fairness, monitoring, and lifecycle controls.
• Coordinate with Infrastructure and DevOps on approved infrastructure, deployment, secrets management, pipelines, and observability.
• Ensure solutions address availability, continuity, backup, disaster recovery, graceful degradation, and failure isolation.
• Consider regulatory, data-residency, privacy, financial-services, contractual, and Sharia requirements where applicable.

6. Architecture Modernization & Reuse

• Maintain an architecture-level view of legacy systems, duplicated capabilities, integration complexity, and technology obsolescence.
• Develop modernization recommendations.
• Establish criteria for modernization, replacement, refactoring, retirement, and controlled coexistence.
• Identify opportunities to create reusable services, templates, reference implementations, and platform capabilities.
• Measure adoption and effectiveness of shared architecture patterns.

7. Technology & Vendor Advisory

• Advise executive leadership on:
  • Build vs. buy vs. partner decisions
  • AI and model-provider strategy
  • Technology investment choices
  • Cloud, hybrid, and on-premise options
  • Multi-country expansion
  • Scalability and resilience
  • Vendor and technology lock-in risks
• Conduct architecture due diligence for major vendors, partnerships, investments, and strategic engagements.
• Evaluate technology options based on business outcomes, security, data use, interoperability, operational support, lifecycle cost, and exit feasibility.

8. Architecture Capability Development

• Build architecture capability across Product, IFI, IDD, Infrastructure and DevOps, and other relevant teams.
• Establish an architecture community of practice.
• Coach Technical Product Managers, engineering leaders, data leaders, and technology teams.
• Develop practical architecture guidance, templates, and reference implementations.
• Monitor developments in AI, financial infrastructure, cloud, data, integration, and security.

Functional Authority

The AI Solutions Architect has authority to:

• Define company-wide solution architecture and AI-by-design standards.
• Determine applicable reference architectures and patterns.
• Assess material design conformity.
• Require architecture and AI-by-design conditions to be addressed.
• Withhold architecture sign-off where material non-conformance remains unresolved.
• Chair the Architecture Review Board.
• Recommend architecture exceptions to the Group CPTO.

The role does not own product vision, commercial scope, product backlogs, sprint or release sequencing, engineering capacity, detailed implementation, model development, model validation, data fitness, production model performance, or production operations.

Key Outputs

• Approved target and transition architecture.
• Reference architecture and integration-pattern catalogue.
• AI-by-design standards and assessment framework.
• Completed AI-by-design assessments for applicable initiatives.
• Architecture Review Board decisions and Architecture Decision Records.
• Architecture exception register.
• Architecture modernization and remediation recommendations.
• Technology and vendor architecture due-diligence assessments.
• Architecture practice guidance, templates, coaching materials, and reference implementations.

Qualifications & Experience

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a closely related discipline.
• Relevant postgraduate qualification is an advantage.

Professional Experience

• Typically 10+ years of progressive experience in software engineering, data platforms, cloud, systems integration, solution architecture, enterprise architecture, or related technology fields.
• At least 4 years in a senior solution, platform, data, cloud, or enterprise architecture role.
• Demonstrated experience designing or governing production AI, machine-learning, data-driven decisioning, or advanced analytics solutions.
• Experience in financial services, fintech, banking technology, payments, credit, insurance, capital infrastructure, market infrastructure, or another regulated environment.
• Experience with distributed systems, APIs, event-driven integration, multi-tenant platforms, data architecture, identity and access, and high-availability services.
• Experience across cloud, hybrid, and on-premise environments; AWS experience is preferred.
• Experience with multi-country, partner-led, or configurable platform deployments is strongly preferred.
• Experience establishing architecture governance, reference architectures, design reviews, Architecture Decision Records, and exception management.
• Experience influencing senior technical and business stakeholders without direct line authority.
• Experience with build-vs-buy assessments, vendor reviews, technical due diligence, or strategic technology evaluations.
• Africa or emerging-market experience is an advantage.

Technical & Governance Knowledge

Strong understanding of:

• AI and machine-learning solution architecture
• Data and model lifecycle dependencies
• Responsible AI and AI risk management
• Human-in-the-loop and human-oversight design
• Model integration, inference, monitoring, and fallback
• Generative and agentic AI architecture
• Data governance, privacy, lineage, and permitted use
• Distributed systems and integration architecture
• API, event, and data-contract design
• Cloud-native, hybrid, and on-premise architecture
• Security, resilience, observability, and operational readiness
• Multi-tenancy and regional deployment
• Technology modernization and technical debt
• AI governance, risk-management, security, and architecture frameworks

Core Competencies

• Enterprise and ecosystem thinking
• AI-by-design judgment
• Strong architectural and technical depth
• Pragmatic governance
• Functional authority and stakeholder influence
• Evidence-based decision-making
• Financial infrastructure and business acumen
• Risk awareness
• Structured problem-solving
• Executive communication
• Cross-functional collaboration
• Courage and integrity
• Learning agility
• Strong operational discipline

How to Apply

Qualified candidates should submit their application to:

📧 hr@kifiya.com

Position: AI Solutions Architect
Location: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia