Head of Platform & Architecture

Turnkey Africa is a leading Pan-African insurance technology and services provider. We develop, supply and manage end-to-end insurance business software solutions and services for the insurance industry. Turnkey’s flagship product, TurnQuest Insurance Suite, is one of the most dynamic products in the market providing a comprehensive and integrated set of a…

Head of Platform & Architecture

Role Purpose

• Lead the Architecture & Evolve Platform portfolio: Architecture & API Standards, Evolve Studio, Shared Experience and Quality Assurance. Give product teams clear technical direction, reusable capabilities and objective quality evidence so they can deliver reliably.

• Work through the four squad leads. Evolve Engineering owns product domains, including COP and FCP. Platform Operations owns infrastructure, deployment, operational continuity and Cybersecurity, Trust & Governance; this role embeds their requirements in designs, shared code and testing.

Career Path

Progression towards Group Chief Architect or broader CTO responsibility depends on sustained delivery, leadership and business need.

Core Accountabilities

Set clear architecture and API standards

• Own target architecture, domain boundaries, API and data contracts, integration patterns, architecture decision records and developer documentation.

• Chair the Architecture Forum; resolve cross-team decisions by agreed dates, review significant designs before build and record approved exceptions.

• Define Legacy-to-Evolve transition designs with the delivery Heads; assess technology choices and maintain the architecture roadmap.

Deliver reusable Evolve Studio capabilities

• Own Evolve Studio’s product and pricing configuration, workflow and underwriting controls, multitenancy and multilingual capabilities.

• Agree requirements with product Heads; deliver tested, documented capabilities, support adoption and resolve Studio code defects. Product squads own their domain rules and customer outcomes.

Build a consistent shared experience

• Own shared frontend foundations, the design system and reusable components that support consistent journeys across products and channels.

• Agree UX and accessibility standards with product teams; remove integration friction and reduce duplicate frontend builds while product squads own their journeys.

Provide objective release-quality evidence

• Lead QA strategy, test automation, regression and performance validation across the portfolio.

• Publish test results and defects against agreed release criteria; flag blocking risks before release and verify fixes through retesting.

• Product squads remain accountable for their code and quality; Platform Operations owns deployment, operational readiness and Cybersecurity, Trust & Governance.

Build capable teams and deliver a resourced roadmap

• Lead the Architecture & API Standards, Evolve Studio, Shared Experience and QA squad leads; develop skills, succession and clear performance expectations.

• Match commitments to available skills and an approved hiring plan; protect support capacity and escalate unresourced work before committing.

• Own the portfolio roadmap, quarterly outcomes and budget; assess build-versus-buy and explain costs, dependencies and investment trade-offs to the CTO and ExCo.

Weekly Success Measures

Architecture readiness

• Decisions due this week completed; significant builds with required design review and agreed API/data contracts.