Principal Payments Architect

Were looking for a Principal Payments Architect to join our growing team in London. This is a specialised architectural leadership role focused on shaping and delivering enterprise-grade payment platforms - from gateway and authorisation layers through to clearing settlement and financial management.

This role is suited to someone who thrives in complex high-stakes environments and operates confidently at the intersection of business strategy and technical execution. You will engage across the full lifecycle - from early discovery and architectural shaping through to delivery oversight - ensuring that solutions are scalable secure commercially viable and aligned to long-term platform strategy.

You will be responsible for designing robust maintainable architectures that address real client challenges. You will define target-state platforms challenge assumptions constructively and ensure that technology decisions are grounded in strong domain expertise and measurable business outcomes.

What Youll Be Doing

You will bring deep expertise in merchant acquiring and payment processing across both online and physical acceptance channels. This includes a strong understanding of gateway architecture authorisation lifecycles 3DS/SCA scheme integrations tokenisation fraud decisioning reconciliation settlement and financial ledger integration.

You will:

• Design and review scalable resilient payment architectures capable of supporting high transaction volumes and demanding availability requirements
• Define and govern non-functional requirements including latency throughput availability recoverability observability and security
• Shape API strategies integration models and event-driven or distributed system designs that support extensibility and regulatory compliance
• Contribute to PCI DSS scoping strategies and secure-by-design approaches within cloud and hybrid environments
• Participate in architectural governance forums representing Endava with clarity and authority
• Support pre-sales and bid shaping activities by defining credible commercially grounded target-state solutions
• Translate architectural decisions into clear executive narratives articulating trade-offs risks and investment implications

You will be comfortable speaking the language of enterprise solution and data architects and equally confident engaging in detailed technical discussions with engineering teams or strategic conversations with C-level stakeholders.

Where appropriate you will explore the application of emerging capabilities - including AI-driven optimisation intelligent routing fraud modelling and AIOps - ensuring innovation is grounded in practical value-led use cases.

Qualifications :

Were seeking someone with significant experience designing and delivering enterprise-grade payment solutions in regulated environments.

You will:

• Demonstrate deep knowledge of acquiring gateway processing and scheme connectivity
• Be fluent in architectural principles and able to apply them pragmatically across APIs integration layers distributed systems and cloud-native services
• Have experience operating in complex multi-stakeholder environments with formal governance structures
• Be comfortable defining target architectures and guiding delivery teams to implement them effectively
• Have experience with major cloud platforms (AWS Azure or GCP) and modern engineering and delivery practices
• Bring experience in pre-sales technical discovery or executive-level stakeholder engagement

You communicate clearly think strategically and approach complex problems with both architectural discipline and collaborative intent.

Additional Information :

Discover some of the global benefits that empower our people to become the best version of themselves:

• Finance: Competitive salary package share plan company performance bonuses value-based recognition awards referral bonus;   
• Career Development: Career coaching global career opportunities non-linear career paths internal development programmes for management and technical leadership;
• Learning Opportunities: Complex projects rotations internal tech communities training certifications coaching online learning platforms subscriptions pass-it-on sessions workshops conferences;
• Work-Life Balance: Hybrid work and flexible working hours employee assistance programme;
• Health: Global internal wellbeing programme access to wellbeing apps;
• Community: Global internal tech communities hobby clubs and interest groups inclusion and diversity programmes events and celebrations.

At Endava were committed to creating an open inclusive and respectful environment where everyone feels safe valued and empowered to be their best. We welcome applications from people of all backgrounds experiences and perspectives - because we know that inclusive teams help us deliver smarter more innovative solutions for our customers. Hiring decisions are based on merit skills qualifications and potential. If you need adjustments or support during the recruitment process please let us know.

At Endava were committed to creating an open inclusive and respectful environment where everyone feels safe valued and empowered to be their best. We welcome applications from people of all backgrounds experiences and perspectivesbecause we know that inclusive teams help us deliver smarter more innovative solutions for our customers. Hiring decisions are based on merit skills qualifications and potential. If you need adjustments or support during the recruitment process please let us know.

Remote Work :

No

Employment Type :

Full-time