Principal Architect FinTech Lending (Java / AWS / PostgreSQL) | Full Time | Mountain View, CA (Hybrid)

Principal Architect FinTech Lending (Java / AWS / PostgreSQL)

Location: Mountain View, CA (Hybrid 3 days onsite)
Employment Type: Full-Time
Start Date: ASAP

Role Overview

We are seeking an experienced Principal Architect to partner closely with our FinTech Lending team within a broader payments and financial services organization. This role will focus on evaluating the current lending platform, building deep technical and domain understanding, and driving a clear modernization and future-state architecture strategy.

The ideal candidate brings strong hands-on architecture expertise, deep FinTech lending domain knowledge, and the ability to influence technical direction across engineering, product, and platform teams.

Key Responsibilities

• Gain deep understanding of the existing FinTech Lending platform, including services, APIs, data models, integrations, and operational workflows.

• Develop a comprehensive technical assessment covering architecture, performance, scalability, security, reliability, and cost efficiency.

• Identify design gaps, risks, and improvement opportunities across cloud, data, observability, resiliency, and compliance.

• Define and document target architecture, including modernization strategy and phased execution roadmap.

• Partner with engineering, product, and platform stakeholders to align on technical strategy and guide implementation.

• Provide architectural leadership and technical decision-making support throughout delivery.

Required Skills & Experience

• Strong hands-on experience with Java-based backend architectures, AWS, and PostgreSQL.

• Proven experience designing and leading cloud-native, microservices-based platforms.

• Ability to ramp up quickly on complex systems and clearly document and communicate architecture.

• Must-have: Strong FinTech Lending domain experience, including understanding of lending lifecycle, credit decisioning, servicing, and regulatory considerations.

Nice to Have

• Experience with event-driven architectures (Kafka, SNS, SQS).

• Knowledge of distributed systems and observability (metrics, logging, tracing).

• Familiarity with financial regulatory and security practices, including auditability, data protection, access controls, and compliance.

FinTech Lending Domain Expertise Includes

• Loan Origination: Digital applications, document upload, e-signatures, eligibility checks

• Underwriting & Credit Decisioning: Credit bureau integrations, income verification, risk scoring, rules engines

• Pricing & Offers: APR, terms, credit limits, risk-based pricing

• Disbursement/Funding: Bank, card, and payment rail integrations

• Servicing: Repayment schedules, amortization, interest calculations, statements

• Collections: Delinquency handling, reminders, hardship programs, charge-offs

• Compliance & Audit: KYC, fraud checks, disclosures, audit trails, data retention

• Lending + Payments/Wallet Integration: Real-time posting, ledger consistency, wallet-based repayments