Consultant - Solution Architect (Digital Health)

About the role

The Solution Architect provides independent technical oversight and assurance of the architecture and design of digital health systems, ensuring alignment with user requirements, enterprise architecture, applicable digital health standards and regulatory requirements. The role reviews and evaluates proposed technical architectures, assesses their suitability, scalability, security, interoperability and sustainability, and gives evidence-based recommendations to support technical approval and implementation decisions. It also monitors adherence to approved architectural specifications during implementation and advises on technical risks and design changes.

Key responsibilities

• Review proposed system architectures, technology stacks, infrastructure designs and integration approaches against approved requirements, national digital health standards and the national digital health architecture.
• Assess solutions for scalability, performance, reliability, maintainability, resilience and long-term sustainability.
• Evaluate interoperability approaches, including compliance with health information exchange standards such as HL7 FHIR, and data security, privacy and access control under the Data Protection Act.
• Define and review technical benchmarks and acceptance criteria, and identify architectural risks, dependencies and design gaps with mitigation recommendations.
• Conduct periodic reviews of digital health system implementations, document deviations and advise on the architectural implications of proposed changes.
• Provide technical advice on emerging technologies and design alternatives, and coordinate with product, project, QA, cybersecurity and data management teams while remaining independent of implementation partners.
• Document reviews, risks, recommendations and decisions to support technical governance and approval processes.

Required profile

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software/Systems Engineering, Health Informatics, Information Systems or a related field; a Master's degree is an added advantage.
• Minimum 6-10 years of experience in software or solution architecture, including at least 3-5 years on health information systems or large-scale digital health platforms.
• Demonstrated expertise in FHIR-based interoperability standards and health data exchange.
• Experience defining performance benchmarks for systems operating at national scale, and familiarity with data protection and privacy regulations such as the Kenya Data Protection Act.
• Experience providing independent technical assurance or audit of vendor-built systems, ideally in a government or donor-funded digital health context.

Required skills

• Enterprise or solution architecture certification (e.g. TOGAF).
• Cloud architecture certification (AWS, Azure or GCP) or equivalent.