Principal - IT Architecture

Overview
Report to:
Head of Architecture & Strategic Planning / Global Head of Execution + Payments Technology

Seniority Level:
Senior

Department:
Stone X Global Payments

Location:
India (Pune / Bangalore)

Geographic coverage:
APAC

Employment Type:
Full time, permanent employment

About the Company:
StoneX Global Payments (a member of the StoneX Group ( ) is a leading global payments Fintech that provides cross-border FX payments solutions to NGOs, Corporates , and Institutions in 140+ currencies to 180+ countries around the world. After two decades focusing on emerging markets payments, the company has a wide network of local relationships, supporting partners, resources , and general know-how around the world, providing a strong foundation to Implement the future state roadmap for StoneX Payments .

Job Posting
StoneX Global Payments is looking for a Principal Architect to build and lead our APAC Architecture practice with a goal of delivering and expanding a high performing, scalable , durable, and resilient digital execution and payments platform. You will need to work closely with the managers, engineering teams, and Product leaders . You must have technical and functional domain knowledge to ensure that we build compelling, customer-oriented solutions in an iterative value methodology. You must be forward thinking to keep the technology modern and up to date so we can continue to deliver high value to our clients. Success in the role requires an innovative mind, a proven track record of delivering next-generation software and data products, rigorous analytical skills, and a passion for creating market-leading software in the financial industry.

Responsibilities
Primary Responsibilities:

• Owns software architecture vision, principles, and technology standards across the organization, working closely with engineering leadership and product management to craft roadmaps and success criteria
• Develops and leads the architectural model for a unit, directs and leads teams to ensure a target architecture for the division. When designing suitable architectural solutions the quality of architectural artifacts is ensured and business scenarios encouraged
• Creates architecture descriptions artifacts and guidelines for an area of the organisaction / flow, ensures alignment to the wider target architecture
• Align applications with integration roadmap and create application maps for target state
• Design interaction points between application components and applications
• Architecture input to development teams
• Evaluate and recommend toolsets and standardize use of third-party components, libraries
• Facilitate developers to understand business and functional requirements
• Periodically review scalability and resiliency of application components and recommend steps for refinement and improvement
• Enable reusable components and share across enterprise
• Create and maintain As-Is and To-Be system maps
• Devises technology and architecture solutions that propel engineering excellence across the organization, simplify otherwise complex problems, and address the "- ilities " (portability, usability, maintainability, scalability, recoverability, availability, extensibility, and security)
• Extends influence across the organization, leading distributed teams to make strong day-to-day architecture decisions independently through documentation, mentorship, and training
• Makes pragmatic, organized, and balanced technical decisions in areas such as build vs. buy, now vs. later, and refactor vs. rebuild
• Builds robust system diagrams, develops a detailed understanding of key aspects current software state, and engages engineers at a code and design level
• Drives engineering architecture definition using multi-disciplinary knowledge, including in cloud engineering, middleware engineering, data engineering, and security engineering
• Understands how to apply Agile, Lean, and principles of fast flow to engineering department efficiency and productivity, and architecture's role in driving team/organization structure and process
• Provides and oversees high-level estimates for scoping large features utilizing Wideband Delphi
• Actively participating in the engineering process and evolving an Architecture practice to support the department

Qualifications
Knowledge and Skills Required

• Ability to depict the technical information conceptually, logically, and visually
• Customer and business focus, and demonstrated skills tied to leadership, people, communication, analytics, and adaptability. Strong leadership skills and demonstrated creative problem-solving skills.
• Ability to influence and retain composure under pressure in environments of rapid change and conflicting demands, communicate effectively with a wide array of individuals.
• Knowledge of industry-wide technology trends and best practices
• Strong analytical and c omplex problem - solving skills; Data driven and results-oriented
• Outstanding knowledge of software and application design and architecture for microservices and microsites
• The sense of ownership and pride in your performance and its impact on the company's success
• Forward thinking mindset to keep the technology modern for value delivery

Education And Experience

• 10 + years software engineering experience , primarily back-end or full-stack
• 5 + years of experience as a Software Senior Architect or Principal Architect using microservices
• Experience in a Lean Agile development environment
• Deep understanding of event driven architectures
• Experience with scalable distributed systems and Cloud Native design patterns
• Knowledge of REST , gRPC , and/or GraphQL architecture
• Experience with Java and .NET technologies, such as C# or other Object Oriented Languages
• Experience with Data Lake, Data W arehouse , and Data M esh ( Snowflake/Databricks)
• Extensive background in  Public Cloud (Az ure/AWS/GPC), C# ,  Modular Java S c r ipt F rameworks ( VueJs of React) , databases (PostgreSQL / NoSQL ), caching solutions (Redis) , and search technologies ( ElasticSearch )
• Strong skills in containerization, including Docker, Kubernetes (AKS/EKS) , and Service Mesh (Istio /Kong )
• Ability and desire to whiteboard , remotely or in person , to articulate an architecture or technical design concept – Experience with tools like LUCID/MIRO etc.
• Experience in the Fintech industry, specifically Payments , is a plus