Job Title: Senior API Engineer / Backend Architect – Payments Modernization
Location: UK (Hybrid – 2–3 days onsite)
Employment Type: Contract / Permanent
Industry: Banking & Financial Services
Key Responsibilities
Deliver engineering expertise to build best-in-class payment processing capabilities
Design and develop high-quality, resilient, and highly available microservices
Produce architectural artefacts including gap analysis, low-level designs, and data models
Lead by example in coding standards, quality gates, and automated testing
Support modernization of legacy payment systems into cloud-based architectures
Resolve architectural and development blockers
Collaborate with DevOps to enable CI/CD, DevSecOps, and automated infrastructure delivery
Provide architecture guidance aligned with global standards and compliance requirements
Ensure systems meet security, data privacy, and regulatory standards
Required Skills & Experience
8+ years of experience as an API/Backend Engineer
Strong expertise in Java (8+ years), Spring Boot, and distributed microservices architecture
Experience with Kafka, Docker, Kubernetes (k8s), and service mesh technologies
Strong understanding of distributed system design and event-driven architecture
JVM tuning and performance optimization expertise
Experience with monitoring/observability tools: Splunk, Grafana, Prometheus, Jaeger, OpenTelemetry
Cloud & DevOps experience (AWS/Azure/GCP), including VPC, IAM, firewall configuration
Strong SQL skills and database design experience
Experience working in financial services, ideally payments
Strong leadership, mentoring, and stakeholder communication skills
Nice to Have
Experience with Go or Rust
Experience in payment systems (ISO20022, SWIFT, clearing, settlement platforms)
Experience with Kubernetes networking (CNI), load balancing, Linux infrastructure