Software Engineering Lead

Solution ArchitectGenesis10 is currently seeking a Solution Architect for a contract-to-hire position with a regional financial institution located in Columbus, OH; Dallas, TX; Charlotte, NC; Detroit, MI; or Chicago, IL. This is a 3+ month contract-to-hire opportunity. This is a hybrid opportunity. Compensation: $85.00 - $100.00 per hour, W2, based on qualifications.Position Overview: We are seeking a highly experienced Solution Architect with 15 years in the banking and financial services industry, with deep, hands-on expertise across payment rails and transaction processing ecosystems. This role is focused on end-to-end payments architecture, emphasizing real-world experience designing, scaling, and optimizing high-volume payment platforms across card, ACH, wire, and real-time payment systems. The ideal candidate will bring a strong blend of payment rails expertise, card network knowledge, and core payment infrastructure design, along with proven leadership delivering resilient, secure, and highly performant systems in regulated environments. Experience working within GCP-based architectures is highly preferred.Key Responsibilities:Lead the architecture and design of end-to-end payment processing systems across multiple rails (ACH, wires, RTP, cards, cross-border)Provide hands-on leadership in building high-volume, low-latency transaction platformsDrive architecture decisions across payment orchestration, routing, clearing, and settlement systemsPartner with product, operations, and risk teams to align payment systems with fraud, compliance, and regulatory requirementsGuide engineering teams on resiliency, scalability, and fault-tolerant design for mission-critical payment systemsSupport modernization efforts of legacy payment platforms while ensuring production stabilityPrimary Requirements:Deep hands-on experience with payment rails: ACH, Fedwire, CHIPSRTP / instant payments (e.g., TCH RTP, FedNow)Card networks (Visa, Mastercard, Amex)SWIFT and cross-border payment flowsStrong understanding of payment lifecycle (authorization, clearing, settlement, reconciliation), API modernization, payment orchestration and routing logic, issuer vs. acquirer processing flows, wires, card expert, UI, and infrastructureExperience with high-throughput transaction systems (real-time batch)Solid knowledge of payment infrastructure, including processors, switches, and gatewaysFamiliarity with ISO 8583 and ISO 20022 messaging standardsProven experience designing large-scale, distributed payment platformsStrong background in event-driven systems, messaging-based architectures, service-oriented or microservices architectures, and high-availability and fault-tolerant system designExperience with cloud-native architectures, preferably Google Cloud Platform (GCP): GKE, Pub/Sub, BigQuery, Cloud Spanner, etcAbility to balance real-time processing vs batch optimization based on use caseExpertise in low-latency system design for transaction processing, horizontal scalability and throughput optimization, and multi-region deployments and failover strategiesExperience implementing disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity and observability (monitoring, tracing, alerting) in payment environmentsWorking knowledge of PCI-DSS, KYC/AML, FFIEC, NACHA rulesExperience integrating fraud detection and risk scoring systems and tokenization and encryption frameworksStrong understanding of secure payment data handling and auditabilityDesired Skills:Experience working with card issuing or acquiring platformsExposure to payment processors or fintech ecosystemsPrior experience modernizing core payment platforms (not strictly API-led)Familiarity with hybrid or multi-cloud environmentsOnly candidates available and ready to work directly as Genesis10 employees will be considered for this position.If you have the described qualifications and are interested in this exciting opportunity, please apply!