The Enterprise Solutions Architect – Payments is responsible for designing and guiding end-to-end solution architectures that enable modern, secure, and scalable payment capabilities. This role focuses on payments platforms, integrations, data flows, and security, working closely with business stakeholders, delivery teams, and vendors.

The architect operates primarily in the design and early planning phases, defining architecture patterns, integration approaches, and guardrails to ensure solutions align with enterprise standards and long-term strategy. While not a hands-on developer role, this position plays a critical role in shaping how systems are built and integrated.

Key Responsibilities

• Understand business drivers and capabilities (current and future state) and translate them into enterprise solution designs
• Design and guide solution architecture across payment systems and related platforms
• Define integration approaches (APIs, messaging, files, ETL) and data flows
• Provide architectural guidance and oversight to application and delivery teams
• Ensure alignment between project-level designs and enterprise architecture standards
• Evaluate current-state architectures to identify risks, gaps, or technical debt
• Assess payment technology trends and emerging capabilities (e.g., real-time payments)
• Partner with vendors and internal teams to design secure and scalable integrations
• Define architecture principles, standards, and reusable solution patterns
• Support roadmap development for evolving payment and integration platforms
• Document solution architectures, decisions, and trade-offs
• Collaborate with program and project management teams to ensure architectural intent is executed
• Ensure solutions meet regulatory, security, and compliance requirements (e.g., AML, fraud, data protection)

Required Experience & Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field (or equivalent experience)
• 5+ years of experience in the banking or financial services industry
• Strong background in payment systems and payment-related architecture
• Experience with payment rails and platforms such as:
  • ACH, Wires, RTP, SWIFT
  • ISO 20022 messaging
• Experience designing and integrating enterprise systems using:
  • REST APIs, SOAP, messaging (pub/sub)
  • Microservices and container-based architectures
  • Data ingestion and integration patterns
  • Experience with cloud-native architectures (AWS preferred)
  • Familiarity with relational and NoSQL databases
  • Experience working with commercial off-the-shelf platforms
  • Experience working in Agile / Scrum environments (SAFe preferred)
  • Strong understanding of security, resiliency, and high-availability architectures

Preferred Experience

• Real-time payments platforms
• Integration with third-party payment services (e.g., Zelle, Plaid, Venmo)
• Architecture modeling tools (e.g., Lucid, BizzDesign, Archi)
• Architecture modeling standards (UML, BPMN, ArchiMate)
• Performance, stress, and capacity planning
• Experience working closely with vendors on complex integrations
• Architecture certifications (e.g., TOGAF, CISSP, CISM, CISA)

Skills & Attributes

• Strong systems thinking with the ability to balance short-term delivery and long-term architecture
• Ability to guide teams without direct authority
• Excellent communication skills with both technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Comfortable operating at both detailed design and executive-level discussions
• Pragmatic, delivery-focused mindset (architecture as an enabler, not a blocker)
• Ability to work across multiple initiatives in parallel
• Strong collaboration and stakeholder management skills