DLT Payments Solution Architect

Our consultancy client are working for a major bank on their DLT Wallet programme which is focussing on the trading of digital bonds, gilts and money market funds for its business, corporate and institutional customers.

We are looking for a DLT Payments Solution Architect to design and deliver the architecture that connects public blockchains and tokenised money to a bank's core payments and event-driven platforms. You will shape how stablecoin and GBP tokenised deposit (GBTD) initiatives are built, integrated, secured and operated, working from concept through to production.
The role suits an architect who is equally comfortable discussing token standards and custody models with product and risk stakeholders as designing Kafka topologies and microservice boundaries with engineering teams. You will be the technical authority for how DLT-based payment capabilities plug into existing banking systems on Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

You will:

• Define the end-to-end solution architecture for DLT-enabled payments, including stablecoin and GBTD use cases, from target-state design through to delivery.
• Design and govern the integration of public blockchains with the bank's core banking, payments, ledger and financial crime systems, covering wallet and key management, transaction monitoring, reconciliation and settlement.
• Architect the tokenisation of money and assets, including issuance, redemption, transfer and life cycle events, and assess the implications of different token models and chains.
• Design event-driven integration using Kafka, including topic design, schemas, partitioning, delivery guarantees, idempotency and replay.
• Define microservice boundaries and apply appropriate design patterns such as CQRS, event sourcing and API gateway.
• Architect secure, resilient and observable solutions on GCP, applying security-by-design principles across identity, network, encryption, secrets and key management.
• Produce architecture artefacts including solution designs, decision records, integration specifications and non-functional requirements.
• Partner with product, engineering, security, risk, compliance and vendor teams to translate business and regulatory requirements into implementable designs.
• Evaluate DLT platforms, blockchain infrastructure providers and custody solutions, and recommend options with clear trade-offs.
• Provide technical leadership and guidance to delivery squads, and act as an escalation point for design and integration issues.

You must have:

• DLT and blockchain: A solid understanding of distributed ledger technology and blockchain fundamentals, including consensus, smart contracts, token standards, wallets, custody and transaction finality.
• Public blockchain integration: Proven experience integrating public blockchains with a bank's systems, addressing connectivity, node access, key management, reconciliation, controls and operational resilience.
• Tokenisation: A good understanding of the tokenisation of money and assets, with practical application to stablecoin and GBTD (GBP tokenised deposit) initiatives.
• Event streaming: Hands-on experience with Kafka, including designing and operating event-driven architectures and working with producers, consumers, schemas and stream processing.
• Microservices: Strong knowledge of microservices architecture and design patterns, including domain-driven design, API design, resilience and distributed data consistency.
• Public cloud: Experience designing solutions on GCP, with a sound understanding of cloud security concepts such as IAM, network segmentation, encryption, key management and secure connectivity.
• Architecture practice: Track record of producing and defending solution architectures in a regulated financial services environment.

The role will be inside IR35 and you will need to be onsite 2 days a week.