Lead Principal Solution Architect (Banking)

TL;DR

Lead Principal Solution Architect (Banking): Set technical direction on strategic banking engagements, designing large-scale Java platforms with an accent on integration, security, performance, scalability, resilience, and maintainability. Focus on shaping target architectures, transition paths, trade-offs, and contributing reference designs for pre-sales and delivery cycles.

Location: Amsterdam office; significant travel required, especially during inception and key program milestones

Company

Digital banking platform provider working with major banks on transformative programs.

What you will do

• Lead architecture on largest regional programs, translating business needs into robust designs.
• Partner in pre-sales to win opportunities, owning architecture from discovery to contract.
• Engage in delivery at critical points: inception, major decisions, and complex problem resolution.
• Produce reusable reference designs, patterns, and viewpoints; feed learnings to Product and Engineering.
• Represent architecture in senior customer forums, analyst briefings, and partner discussions.

Requirements

• 10+ years hands-on designing large Java platforms in production
• Spring, Maven, modern CI/CD toolchain expertise
• Strong opinions on SOA and microservices architectures
• Modern frontend: JavaScript frameworks, MVC, REST APIs (RAML/OpenAPI)
• Enterprise Integration Patterns and frameworks
• Operational depth in app servers, databases, load balancers for high-availability
• Excellent written/spoken English for senior to C-level interactions

Nice to have

• Delivered solutions for large financial services, especially retail/commercial banking
• Public cloud (AWS/Azure/GCP) with containers/Kubernetes at scale
• CQRS, event sourcing, event-driven integration
• API gateways, integration platforms, identity systems in banking
• Industry speaking or publications on banking architecture

Culture & Benefits

• Work with sharp experts in digital banking on high-impact programs.
• Senior technical ownership while staying hands-on with tools.
• Sales culture in Amsterdam team.