Head of Enterprise Architecture

About Emirates Global Aluminium

Emirates Global Aluminium is the world’s biggest ‘premium aluminium’ producer and the largest industrial company in the United Arab Emirates outside the oil and gas industry.  EGA is an integrated aluminium producer, with operations on four continents from bauxite mining to the production of cast primary aluminium and recycling. EGA employs over 7,000 of these people including more than 1,200 UAE Nationals. EGA operates aluminium smelters in Jebel Ali and Al Taweelah in the United Arab Emirates, an alumina refinery in Al Taweelah, a bauxite mine and associated export facilities in the Republic of Guinea, a speciality foundry in high strength recycled aluminium in Germany, and a recycling plant in the United States.

JOB PURPOSE:

To lead and oversee the strategic development and implementation of the organization's enterprise architecture, to shape and align the technology landscape with business goals, and to ascertain scalability, flexibility, and security. To drive the creation of a cohesive and integrated architecture that optimizes technology investments, fosters innovation, and enhances overall organizational efficiency.

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES:

• Spearhead the creation or evolution of the Enterprise Architecture (EA) function, facilitating a balanced pursuit of enterprise information systems, data, technical, and solution architecture viewpoints.
• Lead, design, and own the target state enterprise architecture (Level-0 to Level 4 of Purdue model), the enterprise roadmap, and governance processes required to meet future needs involving data architects, solution architects, security architects, infrastructure architects, and business architects.
• Formulate perspectives on emerging technologies, assess their relevance to business goals and operational requirements, and advocate for a comprehensive understanding of industry trends.
• Lead the identification and analysis of enterprise business drivers, deriving architecture requirements and analyzing industry trends for potential impacts on the enterprise.
• Analyze the current business and IT environment, detect critical deficiencies, and recommend solutions for improvement.
• Make informed decisions regarding the development of Enterprise Architecture strategy and principles, considering overall IT strategy decisions and incorporating new technologies.
• Establish guiding principles, standards, and architecture strategy across infrastructure, data, security, application, and solution domains, influencing the development of the system landscape.
• Prepare strategic trade-off decisions for senior management, securing organizational commitment for enterprise-level architecture initiatives. Drive the planning, development, and administration of proof-of-concept and special projects aligned with strategic initiatives.
• Develop models for compliance architecture, monitor and measure architecture performance against global benchmarks, and ensure compliance in critical areas such as data storage, metadata management, regulatory compliance, and change control.
• Formulate and maintain policies, processes, metrics, and governance structures, ensuring that solutions exhibit resilience, scalability, cost-efficiency, and effectiveness.
• Establish and lead the architecture review board, enabling the alignment of all solution deployments and proactively resolving potential architectural conflicts.
• Act as a representative of Enterprise Architecture in executive and strategic business meetings, committees, external relations, and audits.
• Identify opportunities for continuous improvement of the department’s systems, processes, and practices considering international best practices, improvement of business processes and cost optimization.
• Research relevant regional and global market trends to stay up to date with best practices and drive relevant initiatives for improvements.
• Enable compliance with all policies and procedures, as well as to controls related to quality, health, safety, environmental management, guaranteeing employee and assets safety and legislative compliance.

AUTHORITY/ DECISION MAKING:

Key decisions having significant impact on the department are referred to the reporting manager for approval before implementation.

Job holder exercises financial authority as per the level established by the company board and stipulated in the authority matrix.

QUALIFICATIONS & SKILLS:

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Business, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, System Analysis, or a related field from a reputable university. (Master’s Degree preferred)
• Practitioner qualification in Zachman Framework, FEAF, DoDAF, TOGAF, or equivalent.

Minimum Experience:

• 7-10 years of experience in a similar role

Job-Specific Skills (Generic / Technical):

• Excellent experience working in an Agile environment with a clear understanding of key roles and practices, with specific Enterprise Architect (or similar) experience preferred (7-10 years)
• A thorough understanding of Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Internet as a Service (IaaS), and various cloud-related concepts/models
• A keen awareness of regional laws and regulations pertaining to data privacy, data locality, data retention, data protection, and compliance, particularly in the context of a global company
• Ability to integrate architectural processes with Agile practices
• Advanced customer service orientation
• Ability to work in a team environment and sometimes independently with minimal supervision as the task may be from time to time
• Strong conflict management, facilitation, and resolution skills
• Excellent use of the English (must) and Arabic language (preferred)
• Excellent relationship building skills
• Extensive skill handling personnel from a multi-cultural work environment
• Excellent verbal and written communication and presentation skills
• Ability to scan the external environment and to understand the impact on the business
• Excellent decision making and problem-solving skills
• Good understanding of KSA and EGA culture and working environment.