Lead Airline Digital Solutions Architect

Job Description

• The Lead Airline Digital Solutions Architect is accountable for the end-to-end architecture, technical integrity and delivery alignment of organisation's customer-facing and operational digital platforms. The resource must translate airline business outcomes into secure, resilient and supportable solutions across the organisation, Amadeus and partner ecosystems while remaining sufficiently hands-on to guide implementation and resolve complex production issues.

What you'll do

• Own current-state, transition and target architecture for flysaa.com and related digital channels, including flight shopping, booking, payment, check-in, manage-booking, corporate travel, loyalty, mobile and operational applications.
• Lead solution design for integrations with Amadeus Altéa, RefX, airline web services, payment providers, loyalty platforms, Star Alliance services and other third-party or internal systems.
• Provide architecture and technical governance for Java/Spring Boot microservices, REST and SOAP APIs, middleware, web applications, mobile applications, caching, messaging and data integrations.
• Shape organisation's airline-retailing roadmap, including NDC shopping, Offer and Order concepts, dynamic offers, corporate distribution and progressive modernisation of legacy booking journeys.
• Define cloud and hybrid architecture for AWS-hosted applications, including EKS, containerisation, networking, load balancing, security controls, secrets, observability, scalability, resilience, backup and disaster recovery.
• Establish non-functional requirements covering availability, response time, throughput, data protection, auditability, accessibility, supportability and recovery objectives.
• Chair or participate in design authority reviews; produce solution architecture documents, interface specifications, architecture decision records, sequence diagrams and deployment views.
• Lead technical planning and delivery across internal teams, systems integrators, offshore developers, SaaS providers and airline technology vendors.
• Support technical due diligence, effort estimation, procurement evaluations, vendor challenge sessions and acceptance of third-party solution designs.
• Provide escalation leadership for critical incidents, cross-system defects and performance or integration failures, ensuring root-cause analysis and permanent corrective actions.
• Maintain architecture standards and ensure that security, privacy, PCI DSS, POPIA and company governance obligations are reflected in designs and implementation.
• Coach technical leads and engineers and ensure structured knowledge transfer to company personnel and appointed service providers.

Your expertise

• A minimum of 15 years' experience in enterprise software engineering, solution delivery or technology leadership.
• A minimum of 10 years' demonstrable experience in airline or travel technology, including direct delivery of airline digital commerce or passenger-service integrations.
• At least 5 years' experience performing solution architecture, enterprise architecture or technical design authority responsibilities for business-critical platforms.
• Demonstrable experience leading backend, API and middleware delivery for a large airline website or comparable airline digital platform.
• Demonstrable experience coordinating multidisciplinary and distributed delivery teams, including on-site, remote and vendor resources.
• Hands-on experience with airline shopping, booking, PNR servicing, payment, check-in, loyalty, ancillary, notification or baggage-related journeys.
• Proven experience integrating Amadeus Altéa and/or comparable passenger service systems using REST, SOAP, Self-Service or enterprise airline APIs.
• Demonstrable experience in the architecture of Java/Spring-based services, API-led integration, microservices and containerised workloads on AWS and Kubernetes/EKS.
• Experience with Agile delivery, DevOps practices, technical assurance, code-quality governance and production support. Scrum or Agile certification is advantageous.

Qualifications

• A Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Information Systems, Computer Science or a closely related discipline; an equivalent NQF Level 8 qualification may be considered.
• Required domain and technical knowledge:
• Airline retailing and distribution: schedules and availability, fares, flight shopping, offers, ancillaries, orders/bookings, ticketing, servicing and disruption considerations.
• Amadeus ecosystem: Altéa reservation concepts, RefX booking flows, airline web services and the practical constraints of redirect, deep-link and hosted booking journeys.
• IATA standards and industry direction: NDC message concepts, AirShopping, Offer and Order management, One Order and airline retailing modernisation.
• Architecture methods: domain and integration modelling, API design, security architecture, non-functional analysis, technology roadmaps, architecture decisions and technical risk management.
• Platforms and patterns: Java, Spring Boot, REST, SOAP, JSON/XML, microservices, AWS, EKS/Kubernetes, Docker, caching, event-driven integration, Liferay or comparable digital experience platforms, and React/Next.js or comparable front-end frameworks.
• Operational engineering: monitoring, logging, tracing, alerting, capacity planning, vulnerability remediation, incident command, root-cause analysis and disaster recovery.

Expected deliverables

• Approved solution architectures and implementation roadmaps for assigned initiatives.
• Architecture decision records, integration specifications, security and non-functional requirements, and traceable design approvals.
• Technical delivery plans, estimates, dependency maps and risk or issue escalations.
• Design assurance across organisational teams and third-party suppliers, including documented review outcomes and remediation actions.
• Production architecture support, major-incident participation and root-cause recommendations.
• Current architecture repository, system knowledge base and structured knowledge-transfer material.