senior software/integration architect

Our client is looking for a talented Senior Software Architect highly experienced in Integration, who will undertake key responsibilities in a major new product launch effort of the company. Reporting to the VP of Integrated Services, the role will be responsible for leading the architectural design and guiding the development of the new product, which will involve large-scale integration of offerings from both the company and third-party providers. Heading a development team that will grow over time, the role will be guiding both direct reports and cooperating the client’s units into producing a great outcome, while at the same time following best practices and achieving overall excellence.

Responsibilities:

• Analyze requirements for software development and large-scale integration, following well-established techniques, including containers, microservices and publish/subscribe-based integration.

• Manage a team of direct reports, mostly software/integration engineers, into their everyday work of progressing and delivering the new product offering. At the same time, coordinate a virtual hyper-team, including direct reports, collaborating teams from our client, and external subcontractors, into a collaborative effort for achieving the product’s goals and delivering the required functionality.

• Provide expert, to-the-point advice and guidance on software engineering and integration best practices to all members of the virtual hyper-team, including API designers, mobile, front-, and back-end software developers, and DevOps engineers.

• Assist the virtual hyper-team in integration-related aspects of design, use case definition and analysis, documentation, testing, QA, etc.

• Organize and translate business requirement use cases and scenarios into well-established event-driven, publish/subscribe-based integration patterns.

• Design and implement own APIs and analyze, verify, and consume APIs provided by third parties so as to incorporate the offerings of these third parties into the product.

• Maintain global data dictionary plans and system-of-reference inventories, and manage requirements for enterprise-level metadata, such as API and integration pattern definitions.

• Participate in the selection of the appropriate middleware, ranging from established commercial products and services to renowned open-source solutions, and guide the virtual hyper-team into the requirements for the configuration and adaptation of this middleware.

• Employ in an optimal way Cloud services (e.g., storage, persistence, microservice management, etc.), while always selecting a mix of choices that will guarantee a Cloud-provider-neutral end-result and minimize the dependency and avoid hooking on any specific Cloud provider.

• Design, plan, implement and guide the testing of the product’s resilience and recovery from systems or communications failure situations, including scenarios for distributed transactions, intermediate message storage, and transactions consistency and/or repeatability.

• Cooperate with domain-specific experts and engineers to integrate third offerings, including our client and third-party vendor ones (e.g., workflow management, data analytics, loan management, ERP, CRM, etc. services).

• Assist both the product team and adjacent teams in the selection of third-party software components and services, contributing a judgement from an integration point-of-view, e.g., in terms of readiness, clarity, resilience etc. of integration methods and APIs.

• Cooperate with the PM team of our client to ensure proper delivery of product-related functionality, a sound development and release cycle, and incorporation of requirements that originate from the client-facing operation units of our client.

• Maintain a consistent and smooth cooperation of the overall hyper-team with the horizontal teams of our client, including Compliance, Risk, Business Continuity and Information Security teams, ensuring conformance at all levels with existing policies, processes and codes.

Requirements:

• University degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or Software Engineering; a graduate-level degree in a subject related to complex distributed systems will be considered a plus.

• At least eight years of experience in related positions, working in the integration of complex software systems or products, and a proven record of experience in at least two large-scale integration projects involving various systems from different vendors using APIs, integration middleware and orchestration principles.

• Expert-level knowledge and programming fluency in Java, and an adequate knowledge and ease of programming in C#/.Net, with experience in other languages, like Rust, C++, Scala, Python, etc. being considered a plus.

• Very good knowledge of (including extensive hands-on experience with) the Kafka platform (broker, schema registry, zookeeper, etc.) in large-scale deployments (clustering, partitioning), plus a fair understanding of similar message/event-based, publish/subscribe integration frameworks, like Rabbit MQ and IBM MQ. Hands-on experience with one additional framework besides Kafka will be considered a plus. Experience with Cloud-based message broker offerings will be considered a plus, without such experience serving as a replacement for experience with Kafka itself.

• Excellent knowledge of REST/JSON and REST/XML API integration techniques, including specs and tools for the generation of providers and consumers using Swagger/OpenAPI. In both JSON Schema and YAML format, and WSDL specs.

• A solid understanding of, and proven track record of, using API-oriented microservice development environments, including Spring Boot and Quarkus, and experience with at least one major API gateway environment, with a focus on APISIX or Kong.

• A high level of experience with automated API testing/orchestration/conditioning/ performance assessment tools, including Postman and similar tools, like K6.

• A solid understanding of full-stack software development requirements, albeit possibly with a lesser focus on cutting-edge front-end technologies.

• Prior experience with Azure and AWS services will be highly appreciated.

• A proven record of producing and maintaining complete, clear, and adequate documentation on software, including documentation of complex integration orchestration use cases, and having guided teams towards the same.

• A good understanding of, and experience with, security best practices, tools and techniques, including AA (Authentication/Authorization) best practices, OAUTH2, security tokens management, passkeys, zero trust principles, PKI, and software immunization against common attack patterns (e.g., man-in-the-middle, replay, etc.).

• A proven record of mastering software quality, including code structuring principles, unit sizing, unit testing, integration testing, and the use of tools and frameworks for the assessment of code quality.

• Experience in Agile methodology and Agile team leadership, and an overall collaborative inter-team facilitation spirit, fostering a multi-area, multi-vendor, multi-skill, and multi-culture team environment.

• A fair understanding of the business and regulatory landscape in the financial sector and the ability to follow and implement regulatory requirements in the banking sector, including anti-money laundering, anti-fraud, security, availability, resilience, and privacy regulatory specs. Prior experience with banking software or in a banking-related employer will be considered a plus.

• A collaborative profile and a high EQ.

• Excellent oral and written Greek and English language skills.

• On-site physical presence in our client’s headquarters in Athens, Greece, at least 40% of the working days, on a weekly basis, as dictated by our client’s hybrid working model.

Benefits:

• Competitive compensation, ticket restaurant card, and annual bonus programs.

• Cutting-edge IT equipment, mobile and data plan.

• Modern facilities, free coffee and beverages, indoor parking, and company bus.

• Private health insurance, onsite occupational doctor, and workplace counselor.

• Flexible working model, hybrid benefits & home equipment benefits.

• Onsite gym, wellness facilities, and ping pong room.

• Career and talent development tools.

• Mentoring, coaching, personalized annual learning and development plan.

• Employee referral bonus, regular wellbeing, ESG and volunteering activities