Location:
London / Glasgow
Employment Type:
Full-Time / Contract
Role Summary
We are seeking an experienced Solution Architect with strong expertise in Apache Kafka and real-time payment systems within the banking domain. The ideal candidate will design scalable, event-driven architectures that power high-volume, mission-critical payment processing platforms.
This role requires deep knowledge of distributed systems, financial transaction processing, and regulatory-compliant banking solutions.
Key Responsibilities
Architecture & Design
* Design and implement event-driven, microservices-based architectures using Apache Kafka
* Architect scalable and resilient real-time payment processing systems
* Define canonical data models for financial transactions and reconciliation
* Ensure high availability, fault tolerance, and disaster recovery strategies
* Lead architecture governance and design reviews
Payments & Banking Domain
* Architect solutions for:
* Real-time payments (RTP)
* ACH, SWIFT, SEPA, ISO 20022 messaging
* Card processing systems
* Cross-border payments
* Design end-to-end transaction lifecycle management
* Implement reconciliation and settlement flows
* Ensure regulatory compliance (PCI-DSS, AML, KYC, SOX where applicable)
Kafka & Streaming Expertise
* Design Kafka clusters for high throughput and low latency
* Define topic strategy, partitioning, replication, and retention policies
* Implement exactly-once processing semantics
* Apply event-driven design patterns
* Integrate Kafka with core banking and payment platforms
* Experience with Kafka Streams / ksqlDB / Confluent platform preferred
Governance & Security
* Ensure secure API design and data encryption standards
* Define data governance and access controls
* Maintain observability (logging, tracing, monitoring)
* Ensure system compliance with banking regulations
Collaboration
* Work closely with product owners, payment operations, compliance teams, and engineering teams
* Provide technical leadership and mentorship
* Translate business requirements into scalable architectural solutions
Required Qualifications
* 10+ years of experience in software engineering / architecture
* 5+ years of hands-on experience with Apache Kafka
* 5+ years of experience in payments systems
* Strong banking domain knowledge
* Proven experience designing event-driven and distributed systems
* Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP)
* Familiarity with containerization (Docker, Kubernetes)
* Strong understanding of high-availability and scalable system design
Technical Skills
* Apache Kafka (Core, Streams, Connect)
* Java / Scala / Python (at least one preferred)
* Microservices architecture
* REST & event-driven APIs
* SQL & NoSQL databases
* CI/CD pipelines
* Monitoring tools (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK)