Director of Consulting Expert - Technical Architect

Director of Consulting Expert - Technical Architect

Category: Architecture

Main location: United States, Ohio, Columbus

Position ID: J0526-0143

Employment Type: Full Time

Position Description:

This position requires someone to be in an office work setting in Columbus, OH.

We are seeking a Director of Consulting Expert - Technical Architect to lead a large, multi-year modernization of a mission critical payments platform for a super-regional bank. This role is ideal for a senior consulting leader and architect who thrives at the intersection of enterprise architecture, cloud-native engineering, and complex banking payments ecosystems. You will play a pivotal role in shaping the future-state architecture, guiding delivery teams, and partnering closely with executive stakeholders to ensure a resilient, secure, and scalable transformation of the bank's payments capabilities.

This is a high-impact leadership role where your architectural vision, technical depth, and banking domain expertise will directly influence how millions of transactions are processed reliably and in real time.

Your future duties and responsibilities:

Architectural Leadership & Design

. Own and govern the end-to-end architecture for a modernized payments platform, ensuring alignment with enterprise standards and long-term business strategy.

. Define and apply enterprise architecture patterns, including layered architecture, event-driven architecture (EDA), domain-driven design (DDD), and hexagonal/onion architectures.

. Lead the design and governance of microservices-based architectures, including service decomposition, API gateways, service mesh patterns, scalability, and resiliency strategies.

. Establish and enforce integration patterns such as messaging, publish/subscribe, orchestration vs. choreography, and API-first design (REST, GraphQL, gRPC).

Payments & Banking Domain Leadership

. Serve as a subject matter expert on banking and payments technologies, including ACH, Fedwire, CHIPS, RTP, Zelle, SWIFT, card networks, and messaging standards such as ISO 8583 and ISO 20022.

. Architect and oversee real-time, high-volume transaction systems with strict requirements for low latency, high availability, and data integrity.

. Guide the implementation of payment orchestration, clearing and settlement processes, fraud mitigation, tokenization, and integration with core banking systems.

. Ensure architectural compliance with financial regulatory and industry standards, including KYC/AML, PCI-DSS, FFIEC, and related frameworks.

Cloud, Data, and Platform Strategy

. Lead cloud-native architecture strategy, preferably leveraging AWS or GCP, including containers (Kubernetes), serverless components, and distributed systems.

. Define API lifecycle management practices covering design, versioning, governance, and security.

. Guide the use of event streaming and messaging platforms such as Kafka, Pulsar, Kinesis, MQ, or RabbitMQ.

. Shape data architecture strategies encompassing operational data stores, real-time data pipelines, data lakes, and data lineage.

Security, Resiliency & Performance

. Define and oversee security architecture, including identity and access management (OAuth2, OIDC, SAML), encryption, key management, and zero-trust principles.

. Ensure platforms are designed for resiliency and scale, including high availability, disaster recovery, failover, and multi-region deployments.

. Champion performance engineering and resiliency testing practices, including chaos engineering, to ensure operational excellence.

Consulting & Stakeholder Leadership

. Act as a trusted advisor to senior client stakeholders, translating business objectives into actionable architectural and technical strategies.

. Lead and mentor senior architects and engineering teams across multiple workstreams.

. Balance strategic vision with hands-on architectural guidance throughout the delivery lifecycle.

Required qualifications to be successful in this role:

. 15+ years of progressive experience in technology, architecture, or engineering roles, with a strong focus on large-scale enterprise systems.

. 8+ years of experience in enterprise or solution architecture, including responsibility for end-to-end system design.

. 5+ years of experience in a consulting, advisory, or client-facing leadership role, preferably within financial services.

. Demonstrated experience leading multi-year, large-scale platform modernization programs.

Architecture & Technical Expertise

. 8+ years of hands-on experience designing and governing microservices-based architectures.

. 5+ years of experience with event-driven architectures and asynchronous integration patterns.

. 5+ years of experience with API-first design and API lifecycle management (REST required; GraphQL and gRPC preferred).

. Strong expertise in enterprise architecture patterns, including layered, DDD, and hexagonal/onion architectures.

Payments & Banking Technology

. 7+ years of experience working in banking or financial services technology.

. 5+ years of direct experience with payments systems and payment rails (ACH, Fedwire, RTP, SWIFT, card networks, etc.).

. Proven experience designing and supporting real-time, high-volume transaction processing systems.

. Strong working knowledge of payment clearing, settlement, fraud mitigation, tokenization, and core banking integrations.

. Deep familiarity with financial services regulatory and compliance requirements (KYC/AML, PCI-DSS, FFIEC).

Cloud, Platform & Data

. 5+ years of cloud architecture experience, preferably with AWS or GCP.

. 3+ years of experience with Kubernetes and container-based platforms.

. 5+ years of experience with distributed systems and event streaming platforms (Kafka, Pulsar, Kinesis, or equivalent).

. Strong background in data architecture, including operational data stores, real-time pipelines, and data lakes.

Security, Resiliency & Performance

. 5+ years of experience designing secure platforms using modern IAM standards (OAuth2, OIDC, SAML).

. Proven experience implementing encryption, key management, and zero-trust security models.

. Demonstrated expertise designing for high availability, disaster recovery, failover, and multi-region deployments.

. Experience applying resiliency testing or chaos engineering practices in production environments.

Leadership & Communication

. Proven ability to lead, mentor, and influence senior architects and engineering leaders.

. Strong executive-level communication skills, with experience presenting architecture and strategy to C-suite and senior banking stakeholders.

. Ability to translate complex technical concepts into clear business value.

#LI-GA1

Skills:

• Agile Architecture

• Banking

• Cloud architecture

• Domain Driven Developmnt (DDD)

• Google Cloud Platform

What you can expect from us:

Together, as owners, let's turn meaningful insights into action.

Life at CGI is rooted in ownership, teamwork, respect and belonging. Here, you'll reach your full potential because...

You are invited to be an owner from day 1 as we work together to bring our Dream to life. That's why we call ourselves CGI Partners rather than employees. We benefit from our collective success and actively shape our company's strategy and direction.

Your work creates value. You'll develop innovative solutions and build relationships with teammates and clients while accessing global capabilities to scale your ideas, embrace new opportunities, and benefit from expansive industry and technology expertise.

You'll shape your career by joining a company built to grow and last. You'll be supported by leaders who care about your health and well-being and provide you with opportunities to deepen your skills and broaden your horizons.

Come join our team-one of the largest IT and business consulting services firms in the world.

Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to their race, ethnicity, ancestry, color, sex, religion, creed, age, national origin, citizenship status, disability, pregnancy, medical condition, military and veteran status, marital status, sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, and gender expression, familial status or responsibilities, reproductive health decisions, political affiliation, genetic information, height, weight, or any other legally protected status or characteristics to the extent required by applicable federal, state, and/or local laws where we do business.

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