Technical Architect (Digital Banking)

About the position

As a new initiative, Money Forward has begun considering the provision of BaaS/digital banking in collaboration with Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation.

We are seeking an experienced Technical Solutions Architect with deep expertise in modern enterprise architecture, cloud platforms, and core banking domains. In this role, you will lead the architectural vision, strategy, and hands-on execution for high-throughput, highly resilient banking and financial platforms. You will serve as the bridge between business stakeholders and engineering teams, translating complex financial requirements into scalable microservices architectures powered by Java and AWS.

Responsibilities

Architectural Leadership & Strategy

• Design, architect, and guide the implementation of end-to-end cloud-native microservices solutions tailored for enterprise banking systems (e.g., core banking, payments, loan processing, or fraud detection etc.).
• Establish architectural principles, blue-prints, and coding standards for distributed systems, ensuring high availability, fault tolerance, low latency, and audit readiness.
• Lead technology selection, proof-of-concepts (PoCs), and architectural review for the solution designs in the team.

Technical Execution & Hands-On Guidance

• Architect modular microservices using Java and the Spring Framework (Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, Spring Data, Spring Security).
• Design and implement robust API management strategies (RESTful, gRPC, GraphQL) and event-driven architectures (using Apache Kafka, AWS Kinesis, or RabbitMQ) for real-time transaction processing.
• Optimize database architectures using a polyglot approach (relational like PostgreSQL/Aurora alongside NoSQL like DynamoDB/MongoDB) with strict data consistency and ACID transaction management across microservices (Saga pattern, CQRS).

Cloud & Infrastructure (AWS)

• Architect enterprise-grade, secure infrastructure on AWS utilizing technologies such OAuth2, Nimbus JOSE+JWT, WebAuthn, Authlete and Lattice SigV4 auth starter .
• Drive Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using Terraform or AWS CloudFormation, ensuring automated, repeatable environments across multi-region deployments.
• Enforce cloud security best practices aligned with banking regulatory standards (PCI-DSS, SOC 2, ISO 27001, Open Banking APIs).

Collaboration & Domain Expertise

• Collaborate closely with product managers, business analysts, domain experts, and security leads to align technical strategies with business objectives.
• Mentor senior engineers, tech leads, and developers, conducting architecture reviews and fostering a culture of technical excellence.

Requirements / Qualifications

• Education & Experience: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field, with 10+ years of software development experience and 4+ years acting as a Technical/Solutions Architect.
• Core Java Expertise: Expert-level mastery of Java, core concurrency models, memory management, garbage collection tuning, and JVM internals.
• Spring Ecosystem Mastery: Deep hands-on knowledge of Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, Spring Security, Spring Batch, and Spring Integration.
• Microservices Architecture: Proven track record in designing large-scale distributed systems, incorporating microservices patterns (Circuit Breaker, API Gateway, Service Mesh, Event Sourcing, Distributed Tracing, Saga Pattern).
• AWS Cloud Expertise: Hands-on experience designing and deploying mission-critical systems on AWS. Active certification such as AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional is strongly preferred.
• Banking & Financial Domain: Minimum 4+ years of hands-on experience building systems within core banking, retail/corporate banking, payment gateways (ISO 20022, SWIFT, ACH), ledger systems, or trading platforms.
• Data Management: Proficiency with RDBMS (PostgreSQL, Oracle) and NoSQL databases, alongside caching mechanisms (Redis, Hazelcast) and messaging brokers (Kafka, RabbitMQ).
• Security & Compliance: Strong knowledge of OAuth2, OpenID Connect, JWT, TLS/mTLS, data encryption at rest/in transit, and banking regulatory compliance standards.
• Familiarity with Domain-Driven Design (DDD) principles in complex financial environments.
• Excellent English communication skills

Nice to haves

While not specifically required, tell us if you have any of the following.

• Experience with container orchestration via Kubernetes (EKS) and Service Mesh technologies (Istio, Linkerd).
• Hands-on experience with DevOps pipelines, CI/CD automation (Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions), and GitOps (ArgoCD).
• Experience implementing Open Banking standards and PSD2 compliance frameworks.