Principle Architect

Job description

# **Who are we?** At Finastra, we’re a global leader in financial services software, dedicated to expanding access to financial services and shaping what’s next for the industry. Our technology powers mission‑critical solutions across Lending, Payments and Universal Banking, supporting over 7,000 customers, including 80% of the world’s top 50 banks, in more than 110 countries. **What will you contribute?** Reporting to the VP, Product Engineering - Trade Innovation & Channels , the Principal Architect / Director - Architecture - Trade Innovation , develops, analyzes, and maintains high-quality software product applications. This position is located in **[Bangalore].** **Architecture strategy and roadmap** - **Define and own the target-state architecture.** Establish the north-star architecture for Trade Innovation covering domain decomposition, modularity, microservices, APIs, events, data, workflow, security, observability, deployment topology and migration sequencing. - **Translate strategy into execution.** Convert the architecture vision into a practical roadmap with transition states, sequencing principles, decision gates, architecture runway and measurable delivery outcomes. - **Drive enterprise alignment.** Ensure Trade Innovation architecture aligns with enterprise architecture standards, cloud and security principles, API governance, platform golden paths and broader product strategy. - **Lead architectural governance.** Run architecture reviews, maintain architectural decision records, establish reference patterns, and ensure designs meet non-functional requirements before implementation. **AI-enabled engineering and product architecture** - **Embed AI into the engineering lifecycle.** Champion responsible use of AI and agentic tooling for architecture discovery, code understanding, test generation, migration assistance , technical debt analysis, documentation and developer productivity. - **Shape AI-ready product capabilities.** Identify product and platform areas where AI can improve user experience, operational intelligence, automation, exception handling, supportability, and implementation efficiency. - **Establish AI governance guardrails.** Define patterns for secure AI usage, data privacy, explainability, human-in-the-loop controls, prompt / model governance and traceability for regulated financial software. - **Measure AI adoption outcomes.** Partner with engineering leadership to track productivity, quality, cycle- time and maintainability improvements resulting from AI adoption. **Application modernization and platform transformation** - **Lead legacy-to-modern transformation.** Lead the migration from monolithic and proprietary components toward modular, service- oriented and cloud-ready architecture while protecting functional continuity, customer commitments and delivery predictability. - **Decompose domains responsibly.** Apply domain-driven design, bounded contexts, anti-corruption layers and strangler-pattern migration to reduce risk and avoid uncontrolled service sprawl. - **Modernize the technology stack.** Lead architecture direction across Angular, Java, Spring Boot, microservices, Kubernetes / containers, service mesh, API gateways, message brokers, distributed caching and modern data persistence patterns. - **Create reusable accelerators.** Define reference architectures, frameworks, architecture playbooks, reusable libraries, common behaviors and migration accelerators that scale across teams. **API,** **integration** **and event-driven architecture** - **Champion API-first design.** Ensure REST and event APIs are designed contract-first using OpenAPI / AsyncAPI , versioning, schema governance, backward compatibility, idempotency and clear ownership. - **Architect integration patterns.** Define integration patterns across internal APIs, partner APIs, batch, events, workflow engines, external gateways, customer implementation extensions and domain adapters. - **Own event strategy.** Guide Kafka / RabbitMQ / JMS / MQ patterns, event taxonomy, schema registry, outbox, saga / orchestration choices, replay, ordering, deduplication, DLQ handling and operational observability. - **Enable extension without custom code forks.** Promote extensibility via APIs, webhooks, configuration, plug-ins, domain events and governed SDK patterns rather than intrusive product branching. - **Translate architecture into commercial leverage.** Design platform patterns that reduce implementation effort, improve upgradeability, support SaaS and hybrid deployment models, and enable differentiated customer value without increasing product complexity. **Security,** **resilience** **and non-functional excellence** - **Design secure-by-default platforms.** Embed Zero Trust, OAuth2 / OIDC, JWT, mTLS , RBAC / ABAC, tenant isolation, secrets management, encryption, secure coding and supply-chain controls into architecture decisions. - **Own architecture-level NFRs.** Define performance, scalability, availability, reliability, auditability, observability, cost, recovery and operational requirements for critical product domains. - **Drive** **DevSecOps** **and quality gates.** Ensure designs are supported by CI/CD, automated test strategies, SAST, DAST, SCA, container scanning, SBOM, telemetry and release-governance controls. - **Architect for regulated financial services.** Ensure platform decisions are appropriate for banking-grade security, audit, data protection, compliance evidence and controlled customer deployment models. **Architecture leadership and people influence** - **Lead the architecture community.** Lead, coach and develop solution architects, application architects and senior engineers; establish architecture guild practices and decision forums. - **Influence without ambiguity.** Provide clear direction across engineering teams and help resolve complex trade-offs across speed, quality, cost, security, maintainability and customer impact. - **P