Principal Architect

Qualifications and Experience:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field.
  
• 10+ years of professional experience in software development, cloud, DevOps, and architectural design, with a minimum of 3 years focused on architecting large-scale, distributed systems.
  
• Strong demonstrated expertise in multiple programming languages.
  
• Proven expertise in architectural design and operation of event-driven service-based architectures at large scale.
  
• Demonstrated ability to define and govern engineering best practices, including TDD and clean code principles.
  
• Experience with multiple data store management approaches (e.g., relational vs. NoSQL databases), data modelling, and associated technologies.
  
• Expert-level knowledge of CI/CD, DevOps practices, containerisation, and public cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
  
• Exceptional communication and influencing skills, with a track record of driving complex technical decisions across multiple teams.
  

Preferred Qualifications:

• Strong technical background and deep proficiency in Java and Spring Boot.
  
• Hands-on experience or architectural oversight in Clojure or other functional programming languages.
  
• Proven experience with data architecture, data warehousing concepts, and ETL/ELT pipelines.
  
• Experience with monitoring and observability tools (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, ELK stack).
  
• Experience working in a regulated FinTech or financial services environment.
  

1. Architectural Leadership and Mentorship
   
• Partner with the CTO, the Director of Technology Delivery, and Engineering Managers to define, communicate, and execute the technology strategy and architectural roadmap for the lending and data platforms.
  
• Lead the architectural design and review process for major platform initiatives.
  
• Help mentor and coach engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence and architectural discipline.
  
• Define technology standards, development methodologies, and security best practices for the engineering organization.
  
2. Technical Excellence and Quality Assurance
   
• Help instill a culture of technical rigour, passionately advocating for approaches such as Test-Driven Development and secure coding practices.
  
• Lead complex code and design reviews, setting an uncompromisingly high bar for code quality, maintainability, and security across the platform.
  
• Identify, pilot, and promote emerging technologies and engineering practices, including cutting edge AI practices.
  
3. Technology Roadmapping for Software, Platform & Data
   
• Drive the architectural evolution towards service-based design, event-driven systems, and a modern, highly scalable data architecture.
  
• Shape the strategic direction for hosting infrastructure, containerisation, and CI/CD pipelines in collaboration with Platform Engineering.
  
• Review major technical designs and ensure alignment with the long-term system architecture and business objectives.
  
4. System Resilience and Data Governance
   
• Design and promote architectural patterns for high availability, fault tolerance, and security across the entire technology stack.
  
• Drive data modeling, data architecture, and the evolution of data store platforms to ensure data integrity, quality, and performance at scale.
  
• Proactively identify and resolve systemic architectural risk and technical debt.
  
5. Delivery Enablement and Performance Optimization
   
• Consult on the execution of the technical roadmap, providing architectural clarity and hands-on advice to unblock teams and accelerate delivery.
  
• Contribute directly to production code in critical architectural areas and highly complex situations (e.g., core domain logic, common libraries, performance-sensitivity), staying close to the technical implementation.