Senior Software/Integration Architect

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.