Senior Consultant - Technical Architect

Senior Consultant - Technical Architect

Position Description
This position requires someone to be in an office work setting in Columbus, OH.

We are seeking a Director of Consulting Expert - Technical Architect to lead a large, multi-year modernization of a mission critical payments platform for a super-regional bank. This role is ideal for a senior consulting leader and architect who thrives at the intersection of enterprise architecture, cloud-native engineering, and complex banking payments ecosystems. You will play a pivotal role in shaping the future-state architecture, guiding delivery teams, and partnering closely with executive stakeholders to ensure a resilient, secure, and scalable transformation of the bank's payments capabilities.

This is a high-impact leadership role where your architectural vision, technical depth, and banking domain expertise will directly influence how millions of transactions are processed reliably and in real time.

Your future duties and responsibilities
Architectural Leadership & Design
.    Own and govern the end-to-end architecture for a modernized payments platform, ensuring alignment with enterprise standards and long-term business strategy.
.    Define and apply enterprise architecture patterns, including layered architecture, event-driven architecture (EDA), domain-driven design (DDD), and hexagonal/onion architectures.
.    Lead the design and governance of microservices-based architectures, including service decomposition, API gateways, service mesh patterns, scalability, and resiliency strategies.
.    Establish and enforce integration patterns such as messaging, publish/subscribe, orchestration vs. choreography, and API-first design (REST, GraphQL, gRPC).

Payments & Banking Domain Leadership
.    Serve as a subject matter expert on banking and payments technologies, including ACH, Fedwire, CHIPS, RTP, Zelle, SWIFT, card networks, and messaging standards such as ISO 8583 and ISO 20022.
.    Architect and oversee real-time, high-volume transaction systems with strict requirements for low latency, high availability, and data integrity.
.    Guide the implementation of payment orchestration, clearing and settlement processes, fraud mitigation, tokenization, and integration with core banking systems.
.    Ensure architectural compliance with financial regulatory and industry standards, including KYC/AML, PCI-DSS, FFIEC, and related frameworks.

Cloud, Data, and Platform Strategy
.    Lead cloud-native architecture strategy, preferably leveraging AWS or GCP, including containers (Kubernetes), serverless components, and distributed systems.
.    Define API lifecycle management practices covering design, versioning, governance, and security.
.    Guide the use of event streaming and messaging platforms such as Kafka, Pulsar, Kinesis, MQ, or RabbitMQ.
.    Shape data architecture strategies encompassing operational data stores, real-time data pipelines, data lakes, and data lineage.
Security, Resiliency & Performance
.    Define and oversee security architecture, including identity and access management (OAuth2, OIDC, SAML), encryption, key management, and zero-trust principles.
.    Ensure platforms are designed for resiliency and scale, including high availability, disaster recovery, failover, and multi-region deployments.
.    Champion performance engineering and resiliency testing practices, including chaos engineering, to ensure operational excellence.
Consulting & Stakeholder Leadership
.    Act as a trusted advisor to senior client stakeholders, translating business objectives into actionable architectural and technical strategies.
.    Lead and mentor senior architects and engineering teams across multiple workstreams.
.    Balance strategic vision with hands-on architectural guidance throughout the delivery lifecycle.

Required qualifications to be successful in this role
.    15+ years of progressive experience in technology, architecture, or engineering roles, with a strong focus on large-scale enterprise systems.
.    8+ years of experience in enterprise or solution architecture, including responsibility for end-to-end system design.
.    5+ years of experience in a consulting, advisory, or client-facing leadership role, preferably within financial services.
.    Demonstrated experience leading multi-year, large-scale platform modernization programs.

Architecture & Technical Expertise
.    8+ years of hands-on experience designing and governing microservices-based architectures.
.    5+ years of experience with event-driven architectures and asynchronous integration patterns.
.    5+ years of experience with API-first design and API lifecycle management (REST required; GraphQL and gRPC preferred).
.    Strong expertise in enterprise architecture patterns, including layered, DDD, and hexagonal/onion architectures.

Payments & Banking Technology
.    7+ years of experience working in banking or financial services technology.
.    5+ years of direct experience with payments systems and payment rails (ACH, Fedwire, RTP, SWIFT, card networks, etc.).
.    Proven experience designing and supporting real-time, high-volume transaction processing systems.
.    Strong working knowledge of payment clearing, settlement, fraud mitigation, tokenization, and core banking integrations.
.    Deep familiarity with financial services regulatory and compliance requirements (KYC/AML, PCI-DSS, FFIEC).

Cloud, Platform & Data
.    5+ years of cloud architecture experience, preferably with AWS or GCP.
.    3+ years of experience with Kubernetes and container-based platforms.
.    5+ years of experience with distributed systems and event streaming platforms (Kafka, Pulsar, Kinesis, or equivalent).
.    Strong background in data architecture, including operational data stores, real-time pipelines, and data lakes.

Security, Resiliency & Performance
.    5+ years of experience designing secure platforms using modern IAM standards (OAuth2, OIDC, SAML).
.    Proven experience implementing encryption, key management, and zero-trust security models.
.    Demonstrated expertise designing for high availability, disaster recovery, failover, and multi-region deployments.
.    Experience applying resiliency testing or chaos engineering practices in production environments.

Leadership & Communication
.    Proven ability to lead, mentor, and influence senior architects and engineering leaders.
.    Strong executive-level communication skills, with experience presenting architecture and strategy to C-suite and senior banking stakeholders.
.    Ability to translate complex technical concepts into clear business value.

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