Technical Architect – Commercial Lending & Collateral Platform
Location: Charlotte, NC (Onsite)
Experience: 15+ Years
Employment Type: Contract / Long-Term Opportunity
Note: Candidates must be willing to work onsite in Charlotte, NC and collaborate closely with business, architecture, engineering, and lending stakeholders.
Job Summary:
We are seeking an experienced Technical Architect / Solution Architect with 15+ years of experience in software engineering and architecture, including at least 6 years in a Technical Architect or Solution Architect role within banking, commercial lending, financial services, or related platforms.
The organization is modernizing its technology landscape by moving away from vendor-based products toward a custom collateral management platform. The target platform will be modular, composable, API-first, and event-driven, serving as the authoritative master record for collateral and integrating with Loan Origination Systems (LOS) and Loan Servicing Management (LMS) platforms.
The Technical Architect will own the end-to-end technical architecture, from target-state design and platform foundation through phased implementation, migration, integration, and modernization.
Roadmap:
- P0: Core collateral controls and reconciled migration from the legacy platform
- P1: Process and platform automation
- P2: AI/ML capabilities and intelligent automation
Key Responsibilities:
Architecture & Solution Design:
- Define the target-state architecture for the collateral platform, including the core collateral engine, integration hub, data hub, interaction/UI layer, workflow/rules components, and reporting/analytics capabilities.
- Design domain-based microservices covering collateral registry, valuation, perfection, insurance, release, and document management.
- Design configurable rules and workflow engines supporting business triggers, maker-checker controls, approvals, escalations, and exception handling.
- Develop Architecture Decision Records (ADRs), reference architectures, Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs), and technical design standards.
- Present technical designs to architecture review boards and senior technology leadership.
- Ensure architectural decisions align with enterprise standards, security requirements, risk controls, and regulatory expectations.
Integration Architecture:
- Design API, event-driven, and batch integration layers.
- Define integration patterns using REST/GraphQL APIs, Pub/Sub messaging, Kafka or equivalent event platforms, message converters, adapters, batch processing, and retry/repair queues.
- Lead integration architecture with AFS, ACBS, Loan IQ, nCino, customer master systems, credit risk systems, document repositories, LOS, and LMS platforms.
- Reuse existing enterprise API and event hubs and develop a phased strategy for replacing legacy point-to-point interfaces.
- Define integration standards for resiliency, error handling, monitoring, retries, and reconciliation.
Data Architecture & Migration:
- Design the collateral data model and establish a single authoritative collateral record.
- Define data quality, validation, lineage, and reconciliation controls.
- Own the technical migration strategy from the legacy/vendor platform to the custom collateral platform.
- Design incremental data migration, legacy/target coexistence, parallel processing, reconciliation, validation, cutover, and legacy decommissioning strategies.
- Design reporting and analytics data flows and support regulatory reporting requirements.
- Ensure data architecture supports scalability, consistency, availability, and auditability.
Security, Controls & NFRs:
- Build security and controls into the platform architecture.
- Define patterns for RBAC, Segregation of Duties (SoD), IAM/SSO, OAuth2, encryption, secrets management, audit logging, and data retention.
- Define NFRs and technical targets for performance, scalability, resilience, high availability, disaster recovery, observability, monitoring, and reliability.
- Ensure solutions align with enterprise security, technology risk, and U.S. banking regulatory expectations, including OCC and Federal Reserve requirements.
Engineering Leadership & Delivery:
- Establish the initial platform foundation and technical framework.
- Support iterative MVP and product releases using a phased delivery model.
- Define CI/CD, DevSecOps, automated testing, environment management, and release management standards.
- Provide technical leadership to onsite and offshore engineering teams.
- Conduct code reviews, architecture/design walkthroughs, and technical governance sessions.
- Partner with Commercial Lending and Collateral SMEs to translate business capabilities into scalable technical solutions.
- Support technical discovery and assessment of the existing/legacy application.
- Participate in client workshops and communicate proposed architecture, technical risks, dependencies, and implementation strategies to senior stakeholders.
Required Qualifications:
- 15+ years of experience in software engineering, architecture, and technical solution delivery.
- At least 6 years of experience as a Technical Architect, Solution Architect, or equivalent architecture leadership role.
- Proven experience architecting and delivering large-scale custom platforms within banking, commercial lending, financial services, credit platforms, or lending technology.
- Strong experience with microservices, Domain-Driven Design (DDD), API-first architecture, event-driven architecture, and distributed systems.
- Hands-on technical expertise with Java/Spring Boot or .NET.
- Strong experience designing REST and/or GraphQL APIs.
- Experience with Kafka or equivalent messaging/event platforms.
- Strong cloud-native architecture experience with AWS or Azure.
- Experience with containers and Kubernetes.
- Strong data architecture experience with Oracle, PostgreSQL, and/or SQL Server.
- Strong understanding of data modeling, ETL/ELT, data quality, data reconciliation, and data migration.
- Proven experience modernizing or replacing legacy/COTS platforms, including coexistence, parallel runs, incremental migration, phased cutover, and decommissioning.
- Experience integrating with lending, credit, or core banking platforms such as AFS, ACBS, Loan IQ, nCino, or equivalent systems.
- Strong understanding of enterprise security architecture, including IAM, SSO, OAuth2, encryption, secrets management, audit logging, RBAC, and Segregation of Duties.
- Strong understanding of NFRs including performance, scalability, resilience, availability, disaster recovery, and observability.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
- Ability to present complex technical concepts to technical and business stakeholders, including CTO/CIO-level audiences and architecture review boards.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience with rules/workflow engines such as Drools, Camunda, or Pega.
- Experience with commercial lending/collateral products such as STOC or Broadridge COLLATE.
- Experience with modern frontend architecture using Angular or React.
- Experience integrating with enterprise document management platforms.
- Exposure to AI/ML use cases such as intelligent document extraction, predictive monitoring, and intelligent workflow automation.
- Experience with AI-enabled modernization initiatives.
- Certifications such as TOGAF, AWS Solutions Architect – Professional, Azure Solutions Architect, or Kubernetes certifications.
Key Competencies:
- Pragmatic and scalable architecture design judgment.
- Strong focus on security, controls, and regulatory compliance.
- Hands-on technical depth across modern application architecture.
- Strong understanding of banking and lending technology environments.
- Ability to balance business priorities with technical considerations.
- Strong problem-solving and decision-making skills.
- Ability to lead distributed onsite and offshore engineering teams.
- Strong stakeholder management and executive communication skills.
- Ability to drive architecture from conceptual design through implementation and production delivery.
- Experience working within fixed-scope, phased delivery models.
- Strong ownership of technical outcomes, architecture governance, and platform modernization.
