Job description

Location:
Mumbai
Department:
UK Offshore India
Division:
IBP Digital and Technology
Employment Type:
Full time
Salary:
Competitive

Payments Solutions Architect (13135)

Investec – Where Out of the Ordinary Happens

At Investec, we do things differently. We're a leading international bank and wealth manager built on a culture of curiosity, entrepreneurial spirit and human connection. Ideas are heard, ambition is celebrated, and impact is encouraged. As part of a team that challenges convention and strives for outperformance, you'll help shape bold solutions for clients who expect something more than the ordinary.

Role Purpose

The Payments Solutions Architect is the authoritative design authority for payments solutions, translating payments product strategy and regulatory requirements into robust, compliant, and scalable solution architectures.

This role brings deep, hands-on payments domain expertise across UK and European payment schemes and instant payments, ensuring that all solutions are architected in line with scheme rules, regulatory expectations, and industry best practices, while remaining pragmatic, buildable, and operable by engineering teams.

The role is accountable for solution correctness, scheme alignment, and architectural integrity across the payments landscape.

Key Responsibilities

1. Payments Solution Architecture Ownership

Own the end-to-end solution architecture for payments initiatives, from concept through to production readiness.
Translate payments product strategy and roadmap into clear, consumable solution designs for engineering teams.
Ensure all designs support 24x7x365 availability, low latency, resilience, and fault tolerance, in line with instant payment scheme requirements.
Act as the final architectural sign-off for payments solutions prior to delivery.

2. Deep Payments Scheme Expertise (UK & Europe)

Serve as the subject-matter expert for UK and European payments schemes, including:

Faster Payments (UK)
SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst)
CHAPS
TARGET2
SWIFT (where applicable)

Ensure solution designs comply with scheme rules, message standards (e.g ISO 20022), settlement models, cut-off times, and exception handling requirements.
Advise product and engineering teams on scheme evolution, rulebook changes, and upcoming regulatory impacts.
Support scheme certification, testing strategies, and readiness assessments.

3. Instant Payments & Non-Functional Design

Architect solutions that meet instant payments performance thresholds, including:

Seconds-level end-to-end processing
High throughput and concurrency
Deterministic failure handling and reversals

Define non-functional requirements as architectural design constraints, not implementation afterthoughts.
Ensure appropriate patterns for idempotency, retries, timeouts, circuit breaking, and resiliency are embedded into designs.

4. Architectural Patterns & Integration Design

Define and govern payments-specific architectural patterns, including:

Payment routing and orchestration
Event-driven and messaging-based integration
API-first and service-based design
Reconciliation, exception handling, and reporting flows

Ensure consistent use of industry-proven patterns across payment types and schemes.
Balance abstraction and reuse with strict latency and determinism requirements.

5. Collaboration with Stakeholders including Product & Engineering

Partner closely with the Payments Product & Strategy Lead to:

Shape feasible product strategy
Validate capability models and roadmap sequencing
Provide early architectural input to investment cases

Work hand-in-hand with the Senior Software Engineering Lead – Payments to:

Ensure solution designs are buildable, operable, and scalable
Resolve architectural trade-offs during delivery
Support complex production issues with deep domain insight

6. Vendor & Third-Party Solution Evaluation

Provide architectural and scheme-level input into build-versus-buy decisions.
Assess vendor solutions for:

Scheme compliance
Latency and availability characteristics
Operational fit and extensibility

Support due diligence, RFP responses, and technical evaluation of fintech and vendor platforms.

7. Regulatory, Risk & Compliance Alignment

Ensure solution designs meet regulatory expectations across:

PSD2
Open Banking
AML and sanctions screening impacts on payments flows
Cross-border regulatory considerations

Partner with Compliance, Risk, and Legal teams to embed regulatory controls into architecture, not bolt them on later.

8. Architectural Governance & Knowledge Sharing

Maintain and evolve payments architecture artefacts, standards, and reference designs.
Act as a mentor and coach to engineers and junior architects on payments-specific design considerations.
Promote consistency and reuse across the payments landscape while allowing controlled innovation.

Key Skills & Competencies

1. Payments Domain Expertise (Critical)

Extensive, hands-on experience designing and delivering UK and European payment systems.
Deep understanding of Faster Payments and SEPA Instant operational and technical requirements.
Strong expertise in ISO 20022 message models, flows, and migration considerations.
Proven experience supporting scheme certification, readiness, and change programs.

2. Architecture & Technology

Strong background in designing high-availability, low-latency, distributed systems.
Experience with:

Event-driven architectures
Messaging and asynchronous processing
API-first platform design

Familiarity with Azure PaaS and IaaS environments (e.g. Kubernetes, Azure Container Apps, or equivalent), without being tool-prescriptive.

3. Stakeholder & Influence Skills

Ability to engage credibly with senior product, engineering, compliance, and business stakeholders.
Comfortable challenging assumptions and driving architectural decisions based on payments domain knowledge.
Clear, structured communicator able to explain complex payments concepts simply.

Qualifications & Experience

12+ years' experience in payments architecture, solution design, or senior payments engineering roles.
Demonstrated delivery of instant payment solutions in UK and/or European markets.
Strong experience working with payment schemes, vendors, and regulators.
Degree in Technology, Engineering, or related discipline (or equivalent experience).

What's in it for me?

At Investec, you'll be empowered to bring your authentic self, contribute new ideas, and grow alongside colleagues who share your drive for excellence. You will be part of a collaborative and creative culture where we encourage and are committed to sustainability across our global business. You will share in our purpose of creating enduring worth and together, we'll achieve things tomorrow that hardly seem possible today

As part of our collaborative & agile culture, our working week is 4 days in the office and one day remote. We believe that being together enables us to live our values and support our clients and communities in an extraordinary way.

Investec offers a range of wellbeing benefits to make our people feel healthier, balanced and more fulfilled in their lives inside and outside of work.

Embedded in our culture is a sense of belonging and inclusion. At Investec we want everyone to find it easy to be themselves, and to feel they belong. It's a responsibility we all share and is integral to our purpose and values as an organisation. We believe that innovation thrives when everyone feels respected, included, and empowered to contribute.

We actively seek out diverse talent and foster an inclusive environment, encouraging applications from people of all backgrounds and experiences. Here, you'll find networks, benefits, and development opportunities designed to support your career journey, wherever it may lead.

If this role excites you but you don't meet every requirement, we'd still love to hear from you. Your unique perspective and experience could be exactly what we are looking for. Get in touch!

At Investec, we're deeply invested in our clients, our colleagues, and our communities. It's more than a mindset; it's how we show up every day.

Be part of something Out of the Ordinary.

Recite Me

We commit to ensure that everyone is fairly assessed during our recruitment process. To assist candidates in completing their application form, Recite Me assistive technology is available on our Careers pages. This can be accessed by clicking on the ‘Accessibility Options' link at the top of the page.

The Recite Me tool includes a screen reader, styling and customisation options, a series of reading aids, a translator and more.

If you have any form of disability or neurodivergent need and require further assistance in completing your application, please contact the Careers team at [email protected] who will be happy to assist.