ABOUT US

Familiehulp is a leading Flemish care provider offering support at every stage of life, with the goal of improving quality of life at home. They are active in childcare, family care, maternity care, domestic help (with service vouchers), and elderly care.

ROLE

The ICT Architect safeguards the coherence and quality of ICT solutions (applications, integrations, and infrastructure) and advises the Architecture Board and project teams with clear guidelines, decision proposals, and coaching, ensuring that implementations are secure, reusable, and future-proof.

The ICT Architect supports the Architecture Board by helping to shape the ICT architecture in the broad sense and by validating architectural choices within ICT projects.

The architect:

• formulates architectural advice and principles concerning applications, integrations, data, infrastructure, and security-by-design;
• monitors coherence, reusability, standardization, and future-proofing of solutions (e.g., CRM, integration platforms, cloud/hybrid, identity);
• has a coaching and supporting role towards the ICT experts within the Architecture Board (and broader ICT teams), ensuring proposals and designs are qualitative and consistent.

Core Responsibilities

Architecture Advice & Decision Preparation

• Assesses project proposals for architectural fit with the target architecture and standards.
• Provides written advice to the Architecture Board: recommendations, risks, alternatives, preconditions.
• Steers choices with TCO/continuity/maintainability in mind (not just “quick wins”).
• Identifies architectural dependencies between projects and prevents “point solutions” without an integration vision.

Integrations & Platform Thinking

• Defines and monitors integration principles (API-first, event-driven where relevant, middleware/ESB/iPaaS choices).
• Validates integration designs for reliability, monitoring, error handling, security, version management.
• Encourages reusable integration patterns, canonical data where appropriate, and consistent connections with core applications.

Application and Solution Architecture

• Assesses solutions (CRM, ERP, planning, document management, BI, …) on:
• functional fit and expandability,
• integration possibilities,
• data model and reporting,
• vendor lock-in risk,

• lifecycle/roadmap.

• Establishes architectural preconditions for implementations (e.g., identity, logging, data retention, performance).

Infrastructure & Technology Choices

• Advises on infrastructure issues (cloud/hybrid, network, identity, endpoint, hosting models).
• Validates designs against principles such as resilience, scalability, availability, and operational manageability (monitoring, patching, backup/restore, DR).
• Ensures infrastructure choices align with enterprise-wide standards and security requirements.

Security, Privacy & Compliance by Design (in collaboration)

• Works together with ISO/CISO/DPO to embed security and privacy-by-design in architectural choices.
• Maps out risks and mitigations (e.g., data classification, encryption, least privilege, audit trails).
• Ensures that architecture documentation is sufficient for auditability.

Coaching & Support of ICT Experts

• Supports experts in developing:
• solution designs,
• integration flows,
• high level designs,

• architectural trade-offs.

• Facilitates knowledge sharing: pattern library, best practices, “lessons learned”.

Architecture Artifacts & Standards

• Helps build:
• target architecture (to-be), principles and standards,
• reference architectures (e.g., CRM, integrations, identity),
• technology catalog and “approved products list” (where relevant),

• architecture decision log (ADR’s – Architecture Decision Records).

• Ensures consistent use of templates and minimum documentation requirements per project type.

Knowledge & Competencies

Knowledge/Experience

• Broad ICT architecture: applications, integrations, data, infrastructure.
• Integration concepts: APIs, messaging, ETL, iPaaS/ESB, identity & access.
• Cloud/hybrid and infrastructure principles (network, IAM, monitoring, backup/DR).
• Solution selection and evaluation (RFP/RFQ support is a plus).
• Non-functionals: security, performance, availability, maintainability.

Practical Implementation

Commitment: depending on project portfolio
Work format: 1 to 2 days per month (= IT architecture board 3h/month + ad-hoc reviews + consultation moments).