Lead Payments Architect Core Acquiring & Host Integration

8+ years of experience as a Software or Solution Architect focused exclusively on core payment gateways, Payment Service Providers (PSPs), or core banking acquiring hosts.

Mastery of transactional financial messaging standards (ISO 20022 and ISO 8583) and enterprise integration patterns.

Deep architectural experience with distributed microservices (Java, Go, or .NET Core) and event-driven streaming architectures (Kafka, RabbitMQ).

Hands-on expertise in designing highly optimized relational and distributed databases handling extreme transaction velocities with zero-downtime tolerance.

Proven track record in designing financial ledgers, clearing file generation, automated settlement routing, and multi-source reconciliation lifecycles.

Strong understanding of high-availability abstraction layers, strong eventual consistency, and strict financial data auditing boundaries.

We are taking an end-to-end leadership role as a strategic co-creator to design, architect, and deliver a landmark merchant acquiring and transaction processing infrastructure for a next-generation Digital Currency. Moving away from traditional vendor-buyer models, we are shaping the future of European sovereign payments from scratch in a high-velocity greenfield environment.

As the Lead Payments Architect, you will own the transactional backbone of our Digital Euro merchant acquiring engine—bridging high-throughput backend structures and core payment processors with cutting-edge mobile proximity payments.

What we offer:

• 100% greenfield architecture built from scratch for a strategic European sovereign payments initiative.
• Direct architectural ownership over core acquiring, clearing, and ledger infrastructure.
• Long-term B2B cooperation with flexible remote work and top-tier market rates.

,[Architect the core acquiring engine, including state machines, transaction routing logic, real-time status management, multi-party fee splits, reversals, and automated partial refunds., Own the ledger and clearing lifecycle: design data models and automated jobs for merchant onboarding hierarchies, account mapping, daily clearing file generation, and settlement routing., Drive host and gateway integrations by designing high-availability abstraction layers and secure API bridges between core banking/acquiring platforms (e.g., FIS) and edge delivery networks., Define the data and performance strategy to guarantee zero-downtime operation, strong eventual consistency, and rigid auditing compliance under extreme transaction loads.] Requirements: Java, Microservices, Go, Kafka, Payment Acquiring / PSP Architecture, Distributed Databases, ISO 20022, ISO 8583, .NET Core, FIS / Worldpay / Adyen / Stripe, RabbitMQ, CBDC / Digital Currency Ecosystems