Software Architect (Payments)

Astra Tech

Abu Dhabi

On-site

AED 420,000 - 600,000

Full time

7 days ago

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Job summary

Astra Tech in Abu Dhabi is seeking a Senior Platform Architect to lead backend architecture for next-generation payment systems. You will own the platform across merchant management, POS, and eCommerce acceptance, designing for high throughput, low latency, and production-first reliability.

You will guide multiple squads, translate product intent into scalable, auditable designs, and stay hands-on with critical Java microservice components.

Qualifications

12 to 15 years of backend or platform engineering experience in production payment systems.
Expert-level Java and Spring Boot; production API development and testable designs.
Deep ISO 8583 and payment messaging knowledge across lifecycle stages.
Experience with payment gateways, tokenisation and gateway integration.
RabbitMQ or Kafka for reliable event-driven processing; RPC frameworks like gRPC.

Responsibilities

Architect and evolve systems across acquiring and payment services for high throughput and low latency.
Lead a pod of engineers, set design standards, and own architecture decisions.
Translate product intent and regulatory requirements into scalable designs.
Define integration architecture for card schemes, processors, and internal switching.
Contribute hands-on Java microservice work and drive ADRs and design reviews.

Skills

Java / Spring Boot

ISO 8583

jPOS

RabbitMQ

Kafka

Redis

gRPC

REST APIs

Microservices

GitLab / GitHub

MySQL / MongoDB / Elastic Search

Tools

Java

Spring Boot

jPOS

RabbitMQ

Kafka

Redis

gRPC

REST APIs

Microservices

GitHub

MySQL

MongoDB

Elastic Search

Job description

About Us

A leading UAE-based consumer technology company, building the digital infrastructure of everyday life with a focus on AI-powered fintech, communication, and digital services.

Location: Abu Dhabi

A leading UAE-based consumer technology company, building the digital infrastructure of everyday life with a focus on AI-powered fintech, communication, and digital services.

About Us

Guided by our philosophy, the Blueprint of Simplicity, we design technology around real human behavior, connecting people, enabling financial access, and making everyday experiences effortless.

Our flagship platform, botim, is the region’s most trusted fintech communication platform, combining secure VoIP with action-based AI and everyday money tools. Through botim money, we provide financial services that serve both individuals and SMEs, making payments, transfers, and credit simpler and more accessible. Today, the platform serves 150M+ users worldwide.

Our lending finance engine, Quantix, powers fast, regulated credit across the ecosystem, including innovative products such as CashNow for instant access.

From calls to credit, from daily services to big ambitions, we are rethinking how the region stays connected and financially included.

About The Role

We are at a critical juncture - building and scaling next-generation payment systems across merchant acquiring and core payment processing, powering real-time transaction flows at production scale. This is a high-impact, cross-platform role where you will own backend architecture, make authoritative technical decisions across multiple squads, and directly shape the technical direction of our payments platform.

You will serve as the technical architectural bridge between the Chief Architect and engineering execution - translating product intent into scalable, production-ready payment systems, guiding a pod of engineers through what good looks like, and setting the standard that every squad builds to. You will be the person teams come to when a decision needs to be made, a trade-off needs to be owned, or a design needs to be challenged. You know the payment ecosystem inside out - from how a transaction moves across card schemes, through switching layers, into clearing and settlement, to how regulatory and compliance constraints shape every design decision. Our platform is built on a Java microservices stack operating at the intersection of real-time transaction processing, card scheme integration, and regulated financial infrastructure - and this role sits at the centre of all of it.

What You’ll Do

Platform Architecture & Ownership

Architect and evolve systems spanning Merchant Management, POS, and eCommerce acceptance. You own the platform architecture across acquiring and adjacent payment services - not scoped to a single squad or vertical. Design for high throughput, low latency, and production-first reliability across auth, clearing, settlement, and reconciliation flows.

Technical Direction Across Squads

You will own Technical architectural direction and design decisions across multiple engineering squads simultaneously. You are the person who holds the full-system technical view when individual squads optimise locally. Lead and mentor a pod of engineers - owning design quality and delivery accountability.

Product & Business Alignment

Work directly with Product Owners to translate product intent and regulatory requirements into technically sound, scalable, and auditable system designs. You bridge the gap between what is being asked and what should be built - and you communicate that clearly in both directions.

Protocol, Integration & Hands-on Engineering

Define the integration architecture across card schemes, payment processor, and internal switching layers - setting the technical standards for payment integration including ISO 8583 message design, inter-service communication patterns using Dubbo or a comparable RPC framework, and how the acquiring service mesh connects and fails safely. Stay hands-on - contribute to critical Java microservice components, lead code and architecture reviews, and resolve complex production issues. At this level, you code because it makes your architecture better, not because no one else can.

API & Event-Driven Architecture

Design REST/JSON APIs with strong emphasis on idempotency, fault tolerance, and exactly-once semantics. Drive event-driven flows using RabbitMQ for transaction lifecycle events, downstream processing, and asynchronous workflows. Design Redis-backed patterns for distributed caching, idempotency key management, rate limiting, and real-time state. Design systems that are operable and diagnosable - not just functional.

AI-Augmented Engineering

We use Claude Code as our default AI coding assistant and expect this role to use it generously - for architecture reviews, code and test generation, runbook creation, log triage, and elimination of manual engineering toil. Automate aggressively: If a task is repetitive, it is a candidate for AI automation and you will lead it for the team.

What We’re Looking For

12 to 15 years of backend or platform engineering experience - with a material portion spent building, owning, and operating production card payment systems at a licensed Fintech, payment processor, acquirer, or financial institution. Experience must span architecture, delivery, and production ownership - not advisory proximity to payments.
Expert-level Java and Spring Boot proficiency - microservices design, Application framework, transactional integrity, service decomposition, and production API development. You are expected to review code and jump to write one where required, not just approve designs. Testing literacy is assumed; the bar here is designing systems that are testable by default.
Deep, production-proven command of ISO 8583 and payment messaging - Deep knowledge of full transaction lifecycle - authorisation, clearing and settlement - with enough protocol fluency to make authoritative architecture decisions on message design, switching topology, and host connectivity. Prior experience with jPOS or an equivalent switching framework is expected; what matters at this level is the judgment to define how these systems connect, fail, and recover at acquiring scale - not just operate them. Ability to reason clearly about synchronous vs. asynchronous processing trade-offs in high-volume acquiring environments.
Demonstrated experience integrating with payment gateways and processors - REST and ISO-based integration, hosted payment pages, tokenisation, EMV 3DS 2.x authentication, and back-office reconciliation. Prior work with MPGS, Cybersource or leading gateway integration is a strong asset - particularly where you owned the integration and drove implementation.
Experience working with RabbitMQ or Kafka message broker - designing reliable transactional event flows, exchange/queue topology, dead-letter queue strategies, and message acknowledgement patterns in a high-volume payment environment.
Worked with Dubbo or a comparable RPC framework (gRPC) for synchronous inter-service communication - with the judgment to decide when RPC is the right pattern over async messaging, and how to design for failure isolation across service boundaries.
Architect Leader - leads a pod of engineers by example, setting the standard through what you produce: solution design documents, Architecture Decision Records (ADRs), and integration specifications the team learns from. Equally comfortable running a design review with engineers and presenting architecture trade-offs to Product, Risk, and Compliance stakeholders.

CORE TECHNOLOGY STACK

Required