Architect

Job Title: Enterprise Architect – Payments (FinTech)

Experience: 10+ Years

Location: Hyderabad

Employment Type: Full-Time / Permanent

About the Role

We are seeking a highly experienced and visionary Enterprise Architect with strong Payments domain expertise to lead architecture strategy, solution design, and technology modernization efforts across our financial products and platforms.

The ideal candidate brings deep experience in payment systems, cloud-native architectures, API ecosystems, integration frameworks, and regulatory compliance. You will collaborate with senior leadership, product owners, engineering teams, and operational stakeholders to architect secure, scalable, and high-availability solutions for mission-critical payment systems.

This role is a key technical leadership position within our FinTech organization, responsible for guiding the technology roadmap and ensuring alignment with industry standards, regulatory frameworks, and evolving market needs.

Key Responsibilities

Enterprise Architecture & Strategy

• Define and drive the enterprise architecture roadmap for payments technology platforms.
• Develop architecture blueprints, reference models, and standards for platform modernization.
• Evaluate emerging technologies (cloud, event-driven architecture, AI/ML, API gateways) and integrate them into the payments ecosystem where appropriate.
• Partner with leadership to align architecture strategy with business objectives and regulatory requirements.

Payments Architecture & Domain Expertise

• Architect and enhance payment processing workflows including ACH, SWIFT, RTP, card payments, UPI, FAST/Instant Payments, and other domestic/international rails.
• Lead architecture design for integrations with major payment platforms and services such as:
• ACI, FIS, Fiserv, SWIFT, RTP, ISO 8583, ISO 20022
• Ensure high throughput, low latency, and reliability for real-time and near–real-time payment systems.
• Define solutions for fraud detection, reconciliation, settlement, dispute handling, and transaction reporting.

Cloud & Microservices Architecture

• Design scalable, cloud-native, distributed systems using AWS, Azure, and hybrid cloud models.
• Architect microservices, domain-driven designs (DDD), API-first patterns, and event-driven architectures (Kafka, SNS/SQS, MQ).
• Guide teams on cloud best practices including autoscaling, high availability, cost optimization, resiliency, and disaster recovery.

Security, Compliance & Risk Management

• Ensure end-to-end security for payment systems including encryption, tokenization, identity management, and secure APIs.
• Implement architectures compliant with regulatory frameworks such as PCI-DSS, SOC2, FFIEC, GDPR, and region-specific payment rules.
• Work with InfoSec teams to implement secure data flows, audit trails, and monitoring systems.

Technical Leadership & Collaboration

• Work with engineering managers, solution architects, and senior developers to implement architecture standards.
• Conduct architecture reviews, design walkthroughs, and technical assessments.
• Mentor engineering teams on best practices, design patterns, performance optimization, and secure coding.
• Collaborate closely with business, operations, and compliance teams to gather requirements and translate them into scalable solutions.

Documentation & Governance

• Create architecture documents, high-level designs (HLD), sequence diagrams, and integration specifications.
• Establish governance processes for technology adoption, data flows, and platform evolution.
• Maintain architecture repositories aligned to enterprise standards.

Required Qualifications & Skills

• Bachelor’s or Master’s in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or related field.
• 10+ years of experience in enterprise architecture, solution architecture, or technical leadership roles.
• Strong, hands-on understanding of payments domain architecture, including systems like:
• ACI, FIS, Fiserv, SWIFT, RTP, ISO20022 messaging, ISO8583
• Deep understanding of financial services, banking systems, payment gateways, settlement systems, and transaction processing.
• Strong knowledge of cloud platforms (AWS/Azure) and skills in designing cloud-native microservices ecosystems.
• Good understanding of networking, integration patterns (EAI, ESB, API gateways), and middleware systems.
• Familiarity with encryption standards, security protocols, key management, and secure data processing.
• Excellent communication, documentation, stakeholder management, and problem-solving skills.

Preferred Skills (Nice to Have)

• Experience with event-driven architectures (Kafka, MQ, Kinesis).
• Exposure to real-time fraud detection platforms and ML-based scoring systems.
• Experience with Kubernetes, Docker, service mesh, and API gateways (Apigee, Kong, Mulesoft).
• Understanding of financial compliance frameworks and regulatory audits.
• Experience in modernizing legacy monolith systems into distributed microservices.

Soft Skills

• Strong leadership and decision-making capabilities.
• Ability to influence cross-functional teams without direct authority.
• Strategic mindset with attention to detail.
• High accountability, ownership, and ability to work in fast-paced FinTech environments.