Lead Payments Architect (Core Acquiring & Host Integration)

Emerge Limited; Warszawa; Remote; PLN 280,000 - 520,000; Full time

Job summary

Emerge Limited is seeking a Lead Payments Architect to own the transactional backbone for a next‑gen European digital currency gateway. Remote role partnering across teams to design scalable, highly available payment infrastructure.

You will drive ISO 20022/8583 based integrations, microservices architecture, and real-time reconciliation to support massive transaction volumes with strict auditing and reliability requirements.

Qualifications

• 8+ years as Software/Solution Architect focused on core payment gateways, PSPs, or banking acquiring hosts.
• Deep mastery of financial messaging standards (ISO 20022, ISO 8583).
• Hands-on architectural command of distributed microservices (Java, Go, or .NET Core), event-driven streaming (Kafka), and high-load databases.

Responsibilities

• Core Acquiring Engine: Architect the state machine, routing logic, multi-party fee splits, reversals, and automated partial refunds.
• Ledger & Clearing Lifecycle: Design data models for merchant onboarding hierarchies, daily clearing files, automated settlement routing, and real-time reconciliation.
• Host & Gateway Integrations: Build high-availability abstraction layers and secure API bridges connecting core acquiring platforms with edge networks using ISO 20022 and ISO 8583.
• High-Throughput Architecture: Ensure zero-downtime tolerance, strong eventual consistency, and strict financial auditing boundaries.

Skills

Software Architecture

Payment gateways

ISO 20022

ISO 8583

Microservices

Java/Go/.NET Core

Kafka

High-load databases

Tools

FIS integration

Kafka tools

Job description

Lead Payments Architect (Core Acquiring & Host Integration)

Emerge in numbers

• 14 years on the market
• 100 people onboard
• 1 6 years of average employment duration
• 50 million transactions daily for mobile wallet
• 1 B$ value transactions daily for mobile wallet
  
• 1 billion mobile money accounts

Lead Payments Architect – Next-Gen Digital Currency Ecosystem (Remote)

We are building the future of European sovereign payments from scratch. As a strategic co-creator, we are architecting a landmark merchant acquiring and transaction processing infrastructure for a next-generation Digital Currency – bridging high-velocity backend engines with cutting-edge mobile proximity payments .

We are looking for a Lead Payments Architect to own the transactional backbone of our merchant acquiring engine .

What you will own:

Core Acquiring Engine: Architect the state machine, routing logic, multi-party fee splits, reversals, and automated partial refunds .

Ledger & Clearing Lifecycle: Design data models for merchant onboarding hierarchies, daily clearing files, automated settlement routing, and real-time reconciliation .

Host & Gateway Integrations: Build high-availability abstraction layers and secure API bridges connecting core acquiring platforms (e.g., FIS) with edge networks using ISO 20022 and ISO 8583 .

High-Throughput Architecture: Ensure zero-downtime tolerance, strong eventual consistency, and strict financial auditing boundaries .

What we are looking for:

8+ years as a Software/Solution Architect focused on core payment gateways, PSPs, or banking acquiring hosts .

Deep mastery of financial messaging standards (ISO 20022, ISO 8583) .

Hands-on architectural command of distributed microservices (Java, Go, or .NET Core), event-driven streaming (Kafka), and high-load databases .

Ready to shape a greenfield European payment infrastructure?