Principal Architect
- Role
- Engineering Management
- Experience
- Principal
- Employment
- Full-time
Open to Anywhere in APAC & Europe + AE. Set where you work from to check your eligibility.
No BS summary
Principal-level architecture lead with 10+ years in software engineering and deep fintech infrastructure experience. Must have architected large-scale payment platforms, ledger systems, or high-volume financial systems, with strong AWS, microservices, distributed systems, security, and compliance knowledge. Open to candidates across APAC/Europe, with UAE/Dubai signals in metadata.
Core skills
Required skills
Principal Architect
Department: Engineering
Employment Type: Full Time
Location: Dubai
Description
We’re looking for a seasoned Principal Architect / Architecture Lead to own and drive KAST’s technical strategy as we scale our global fintech platform. You will be the primary technical authority for our system design, responsible for ensuring that our high-throughput transaction engines and complex microservices ecosystem remain resilient, performant, and secure under massive load.
You will partner with Engineering, Product, and Security leadership to bridge the gap between business growth and technical execution, setting the standards for how we build, deploy, and evolve our transactional infrastructure on AWS.
Location: open to hire across APAC/Europe.
What You’ll Be Doing
- Own the Architectural Vision: Define and drive the long-term technical architecture for KAST, ensuring our platform evolves to meet the demands of high-throughput transactional volume.
- Design for Scale & Reliability: Lead the design and review of our distributed systems, ensuring our microservices architecture is built for fault tolerance, high availability, and massive scalability on AWS.
- Optimize Transactional Flows: architect critical path systems, including our payment processing, ledger management, and financial data consistency models, ensuring sub-millisecond performance and auditability.
- Establish Engineering Standards: Define architecture principles, coding standards, and deployment patterns (CI/CD, IaC) that enable autonomous microservices teams to ship code safely and rapidly.
- Cloud-Native Strategy: Lead our AWS strategy, optimizing resource utilization, latency, and cost while leveraging managed services to improve developer velocity.
- Drive Security & Compliance: Integrate security-by-design principles into our architecture, ensuring that our transaction-heavy environment meets strict financial compliance standards (PCI-DSS, SOC2).
- Influence & Mentor: Act as a force multiplier for the engineering organization by mentoring senior engineers, leading architecture review boards, and guiding major technical decisions.
What You'll Bring
- Proven Fintech Leadership: 10+ years of software engineering experience, with a significant track record architecting large-scale payment platforms, ledger systems, or high-volume financial infrastructure.
- Distributed Systems Expert: Deep expertise in microservices architecture, event-driven design, and the trade-offs inherent in building consistent, high-throughput distributed systems.
- Cloud-Native Proficiency: Extensive experience designing and operating complex, high-traffic applications on AWS.
- Data & Transaction Integrity: Strong understanding of database patterns for financial data, including transaction atomicity, consistency models, and handling distributed data across microservices.
- Strategic Influencer: Demonstrated ability to influence technical direction across multiple teams, manage stakeholder expectations, and drive consensus on complex architectural trade-offs.
- Security & Compliance Awareness: Knowledge of designing for security within a regulated industry, understanding how to protect sensitive financial data while maintaining system throughput.
- Growth Mindset: Ability to balance immediate delivery needs with long-term architectural debt management.
What you'll do
- Own and drive KAST’s technical strategy as the company scales its global fintech platform.
- Serve as the primary technical authority for system design.
- Ensure high-throughput transaction engines and microservices remain resilient, performant, and secure under massive load.
- Partner with Engineering, Product, and Security leadership to connect business growth with technical execution.
- Set standards for building, deploying, and evolving transactional infrastructure on AWS.
- Define and drive the long-term technical architecture for KAST.
- Lead the design and review of distributed systems.
- Ensure the microservices architecture is built for fault tolerance, high availability, and massive scalability on AWS.
- Architect critical path systems including payment processing, ledger management, and financial data consistency models.
- Ensure sub-millisecond performance and auditability for transactional flows.
- Define architecture principles, coding standards, and deployment patterns including CI/CD and IaC.
- Enable autonomous microservices teams to ship code safely and rapidly.
- Lead AWS strategy.
- Optimize AWS resource utilization, latency, and cost.
- Leverage managed AWS services to improve developer velocity.
- Integrate security-by-design principles into architecture.
- Ensure the transaction-heavy environment meets financial compliance standards including PCI-DSS and SOC2.
- Mentor senior engineers.
- Lead architecture review boards.
- Guide major technical decisions.
What they require
- 10+ years of software engineering experience.
- Significant track record architecting large-scale payment platforms, ledger systems, or high-volume financial infrastructure.
- Deep expertise in microservices architecture.
- Deep expertise in event-driven design.
- Deep expertise in the trade-offs of building consistent, high-throughput distributed systems.
- Extensive experience designing and operating complex, high-traffic applications on AWS.
- Strong understanding of database patterns for financial data, including transaction atomicity, consistency models, and handling distributed data across microservices.
- Demonstrated ability to influence technical direction across multiple teams.
- Ability to manage stakeholder expectations.
- Ability to drive consensus on complex architectural trade-offs.
- Knowledge of designing for security within a regulated industry.
- Understanding of how to protect sensitive financial data while maintaining system throughput.
- Ability to balance immediate delivery needs with long-term architectural debt management.
KAST is redefining stablecoin banking for global citizens, crypto professionals, Web3-native businesses, and high-inflation markets hungry for USD-backed banking. It is backed by top-tier global investors and led by the ex-APAC CEO of Circle, with a leadership team spanning Circle, Airwallex, Revolut, Wise, Grab, Zoom, AWS, and leading OTC desks.