Chief Enterprise Architect (CEA)

1. Role Purpose

The Chief Enterprise Architect (CEA) defines, owns and governs PVcomBank's enterprise architecture — the business, data, application and technology architecture of the bank — as the discipline for proactively and holistically leading the bank's response to disruption, by steering the execution of change toward the desired business vision and outcomes. The CEA sets the enterprise architecture vision, principles and target state; chairs the bank's Architecture Board; and aligns technology investment with strategic objectives so that the bank's technology estate is scalable, secure, resilient and able to support long-term growth.

This is a direction-setting and governance role, not a delivery role. The CEA leads the Architecture & Portfolio Governance Center, which brings together the Enterprise Architecture and Solution Architecture teams. Solution design is performed by the SA team; implementation and delivery are performed by the delivery units. The CEA sets the target architecture and standards they work to, and decides architecture matters through the Architecture Board.

3. Key Accountabilities

3.1 Enterprise Architecture Vision, Strategy & Roadmap

• Define and own the enterprise architecture vision, architecture principles and target-state architecture across the business, data, application and technology domains, aligned to the Banking IT Strategy and the Data & AI Strategy.

• Translate business strategy into baseline, target and transition architectures and a sequenced architecture roadmap that the delivery organization can execute.

• Evaluate emerging technologies and advise on strategic investments; provide the architecture-fit assessment that informs IT portfolio prioritization.

3.2 Capability-to-Platform Boundaries

• Starting from the capability baseline approved by the strategy and transformation function, decide how each business capability is served — by an enterprise business platform, a shared enterprise service, the integration layer or a channel application — so that business rules, workflow and state are held once and are not re-implemented channel by channel.

• Maintain end-to-end traceability for priority customer journeys: from each journey stage and the business process behind it, to the business capability required, the platform or shared service that provides it, the channel that consumes it and the underlying applications; agree boundaries, service commitments and hand-offs with the business, platform and product owners.

• Decide the disposition of each capability and system — reuse, extend, replace, retire or build new — and the increments that follow from it.

• Validate the architecture implications and dependencies of each initiative so that it traces back to an approved strategic objective, capability, consuming business owner and benefit owner.

• Supply the technical measures used to assess capability increments: reuse, interoperability, platform adoption, architecture debt, scalability, data readiness and operational resilience.

• Partner with business leaders to make architecture trade-offs explicit in business terms.

3.3 Platform, Application & Integration Architecture

• Set architecture standards for enterprise platforms, digital channels, core banking and business systems; ensure consistency, interoperability and reuse across technology domains.

• Direct the progressive modernization of the legacy core and surrounding systems, minimizing migration and operational risk in a brownfield estate.

• Direct API-first, microservices, event-driven and distributed-architecture adoption, including API architecture that meets the technical and security specifications of Thông tư 64/2024/TT-NHNN.

• Ensure, through the Architecture Board, that the solution designs of strategic and mission-critical initiatives conform to the target architecture.

3.4 Cloud, Infrastructure & Resilience Architecture

• Define the hybrid-cloud architecture strategy (on-premises, AWS, Microsoft 365) within data-residency and SBV constraints; direct cloud-native adoption and application modernization.

• Embed reliability, availability, performance, scalability and cost discipline (FinOps) by design, and align architecture with the Basel Committee's Principles for Operational Resilience for critical operations.

3.5 Data, AI & Emerging-Technology Architecture

• Partner with the CDO so that the enterprise data architecture (Lake House, Data Mesh, data integration) and AI platforms are coherent with the enterprise architecture; govern the integration architecture of the enterprise data ecosystem.

• Set reference architectures, patterns and guardrails for Generative and Agentic AI (agent orchestration, tool use, LLM gateway, security and observability), working with the CDO, CISO and risk functions.

• Assess other emerging technologies (e.g. IoT, blockchain, edge computing) on business relevance and risk before recommending investment.

3.6 Architecture Governance, Decision Authority & Technical Debt

• Chair the Architecture Board and run architecture governance over solution designs, integration patterns, data-architecture alignment, security and resilience controls, technology standards, exceptions and architecture decisions.

• Ensure enterprise-wide service, compliance, security and resilience requirements are set once on the capability concerned and verified wherever that capability is used, instead of being restated initiative by initiative.

• Ensure architectures comply with security, privacy and regulatory requirements, together with the CISO and DPO.

• Lead architecture risk assessment and a technical-debt strategy (taxonomy, inventory, quantification, prioritized remediation); define architecture metrics and KPIs and report architecture health and conformance to senior leadership.

3.7 EA Practice & Repository

• Build and maintain the EA practice: the EA method, repository and metamodel; current, target and transition architectures; the application and integration inventory; architecture decision records; the exception log and the architecture debt register.

• Keep these artefacts current and usable as the single reference for architecture decisions across the bank.

3.8 Organization, Executive Leadership & Architecture Capability

• Lead the Architecture & Portfolio Governance Center: plan, assign and develop the Enterprise Architecture and Solution Architecture teams and raise the professional standard of both.

• Advise the CEO, Board of Management and Board of Directors on technology strategy and architecture investment; represent architecture in Board and Executive Committee discussions.

• Mentor the bank's enterprise, application, data, infrastructure and security architects and technical leaders; build an architecture community of practice across IT and business.

• Engage strategic technology partners and vendors (e.g. AWS, IBM, BCG) so that their proposals and solutions conform to the target architecture.

Education

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering or a related field. A postgraduate degree (MBA, MSc or PhD) is an advantage but does not substitute for the architecture leadership track record below.

Experience — leadership and track record

• 15+ years of progressive experience in software engineering, enterprise architecture or technology leadership, including 5+ years in a senior, principal or chief architect role (or equivalent) at an enterprise-scale organization.

• Proven leadership of enterprise architecture — not only solution architecture — in a large, complex, regulated organization, ideally a bank, with accountability for the architecture of the whole enterprise.

• Demonstrated brownfield modernization through a large-scale digital transformation, with evidence of sequencing change safely and delivering measurable outcomes.

• Has established and run architecture governance (an architecture board, compliance reviews, technical-debt management) that measurably improved architecture quality and conformance.

• Has led both enterprise architects and solution architects as a unit, and built an EA practice and repository from an early stage of maturity.

Functional / technical breadth (must be current)

• Enterprise architecture frameworks and methods — TOGAF Standard (10th Edition) — together with EA repository and metamodel practice.

• Cloud platforms (hybrid / multi-cloud, ideally AWS), distributed systems, microservices, APIs, event-driven architecture and enterprise integration.

• Data platforms and AI architecture, including Generative / Agentic AI patterns and their governance.

• Security architecture, operational resilience and banking regulatory requirements.

Leadership competencies

• Strategic leadership and business acumen; able to influence executive leadership and drive enterprise-wide change.

• Exceptional stakeholder management, communication and decision-making; translates architecture into business and Board language (value, cost, risk).

• A coach and capability-builder who develops architects and technical leaders around them.

• Professional working English; able to engage global technology partners.