Card Solutions Architect - Contract Role - Sheffield

- 15 years of experience in software engineering and solution architecture, with a strong focus on banking and payments systems - Deep domain knowledge of card processing systems (e.g., authorization, clearing, settlement, dispute management) - Proven experience designing high-throughput, low-latency transactional systems - Experience operating within large-scale, matrixed enterprise environments - Strong background in cloud-native architecture (AWS, Azure, or GCP), including relevant certifications - Demonstrated ability to handle complex, ambiguous technical problems and translate them into structured solutions - Strong stakeholder engagement across business, engineering, and infrastructure teams - Technical Skills in Architecture & Design: Microservices, event-driven architecture, domain-driven design (DDD), layered architecture - Integration expertise with RESTful APIs, OpenAPI specs, messaging systems (Kafka, MQ), asynchronous processing - Familiarity with Cloud & Infrastructure: Cloud-native design, containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), CI/CD pipelines - Knowledge of Data Management: Distributed data systems, RDBMS/NoSQL, data modeling, data consistency patterns - Understanding of Security: Secure-by-design principles, IAM, encryption, threat modeling, regulatory compliance - Skills in Resilience: High availability, fault tolerance, disaster recovery, observability (logging, monitoring, tracing) - Experience designing across channels: web, mobile, API gateways, and backend orchestration layers - Exposure to legacy integration with mainframe systems (desirable but not essential) - Strong focus on cybersecurity and secure architecture practices - Ability to mentor engineers and architects, driving technical best practices and governance - Comfortable working across global teams with distributed stakeholders