Description
We are seeking an experienced senior solutions architect – cards & payments platform to lead architecture design and delivery for strategic cards and payments initiatives within a leading banking environment.
The ideal candidate will possess deep expertise in cards processing, card management platforms, payment ecosystems, banking integrations, API architecture, security, and enterprise-scale solution design. This role requires ownership of end-to-end architecture solutions that balance business requirements, customer experience, scalability, resiliency, security, and operational excellence.
Requirements
Key responsibilities:
Required experience
- 10+ years of overall technology experience.
- Minimum 2–3 years as a solution architect or technical architect within cards/payments domain.
- Strong experience in banking and financial services environments.
- Proven experience delivering enterprise-scale cards and payments solutions.
Solution architecture & delivery
- Design end-to-end architecture solutions for cards and payments platforms.
- Produce architecture artifacts, solution designs, and technical specifications.
- Define scalable, resilient, secure, and reusable architecture patterns.
- Ensure alignment with enterprise architecture standards and business objectives.
- Evaluate and integrate third-party card management and payment solutions.
- Support solution estimation, feasibility studies, vendor assessments, and technology selection.
- Collaborate with product, business, engineering, infrastructure, security, and operations teams.
- Drive architecture governance, reviews, and compliance processes.
Cards & payments domain leadership
Architect solutions across the complete card lifecycle:
- Card issuance
- Card activation
- Card management
- Transaction processing
- Acquiring
- Authorization
- Clearing
- Settlement
- Chargebacks
- Dispute management
Design solutions for:
- Credit cards
- Debit cards
- Prepaid cards
- Corporate cards
- Co-branded cards
- Loyalty & rewards programs
- Cashback solutions
- Installment payment programs
Work with payment gateways, processors, switches, clearing systems, and banking ecosystems.
Architecture governance
- Develop reusable reference architectures and architecture blueprints.
- Conduct peer reviews and architecture assessments.
- Mentor junior architects and engineering teams.
- Deliver architecture workshops and knowledge-sharing sessions.
- Contribute to architecture standards, patterns, and best practices.
Mandatory domain expertise
Card management platforms
Hands-on architecture experience with one or more of:
- VisionPLUS
- Way4
- First Data
- CardPac
- Similar card management systems
Cards processing
Strong understanding of:
- Authorization processing
- Clearing & settlement
- Card switching
- Acquiring
- Issuing
- Merchant payments
- Chargebacks
- Dispute management
- Reconciliation processes
Payment ecosystem
Experience with:
- Payment gateways
- Payment processors
- Card networks
- Clearing systems
- Banking integration platforms
- Third-party financial ecosystems
Industry standards & compliance
Strong knowledge of:
- PCI-DSS
- EMV
- PSD2
- UAE Central Bank regulations
- GDPR
- Financial services security standards
Security & fraud prevention
Experience implementing:
- Tokenization
- 3D Secure (3DS)
- Encryption technologies
- Authentication & authorization frameworks
- Secure API design
- Data protection controls
Technical skills
Architecture & integration
- Enterprise architecture
- Solution architecture
- Technical architecture
- API architecture
- Microservices architecture
- Event-driven architecture
- Distributed systems design
- Integration architecture
Banking & payments technologies
- REST APIs
- SOAP services
- ISO 8583
- Payment switch integrations
- Core banking integrations
- Middleware platforms
- Enterprise service bus (ESB)
Security architecture
- Threat modeling
- Data classification
- Asset valuation
- Security by design
- Security logging & monitoring
- Encryption & key management
- Authentication & authorization
- Cybersecurity controls
Cloud & modern engineering (preferred)
Exposure to:
- Cloud architecture
- DevOps practices
- Container platforms
- CI/CD pipelines
AI knowledge (preferred)
Awareness or experience with:
- Artificial intelligence
- Machine learning
- Generative AI
- Large language models (LLMs)
- Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)
- Embedding models
- Vector databases
- AI agents / agentic AI
- Model context protocol (MCP)
- GitHub Copilot
- Claude Code
Key competencies
- Strong stakeholder management skills
- Excellent communication and presentation skills
- Strategic and analytical thinking
- Strong problem-solving capabilities
- Delivery-focused mindset
- Ability to balance customer experience, functionality, security, performance, and resiliency
- Self-driven and capable of working with minimal supervision
- Strong mentoring and coaching abilities
- High learning agility and adaptability