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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.