Cards Solution Architect

Cards Solution Architect

Location: Knutsford - 2 days a week in office

Duration: 2-3 months

Rate: £500 p/d Inside IR35

Role Description

Seeking a Cards Solution Architect with experience in current account journeys, including loans and account switching. The ideal candidate will be responsible for designing, developing, and implementing technology solutions for complex core banking and current account challenges, ensuring systems are scalable, resilient, and secure. This role requires strong domain expertise in payments, core banking, and cards systems.

You will work closely with stakeholders across business and technology, taking ownership of solution architecture for core banking programmes, and guiding integration strategies-balancing cloud adoption, automation, and compliance.

Key Responsibilities

• Provide expertise in the Cards and Payments domain, particularly in card issuance and authorisation journeys.
• Lead design and technical architecture for loans, savings/current accounts, current account switching, and payments, with focus on scalability, resiliency, security, and regulatory compliance.
• Collaborate with project managers, product owners, and business analysts to align solutions with business requirements and risk controls for current accounts.
• Oversee architectural governance, producing design artefacts for privacy, records management, and risk.
• Advise business and product teams, support technical delivery, and drive innovation in the banking landscape.
• Evaluate and integrate vendor products, contribute to systems strategy, and automate operational processes to reduce manual intervention.

Essential Expertise

• Strong knowledge of the current account and core banking landscape, payment schemes, and architecture paradigms (cloud, APIs, DevOps, security).
• Hands-on experience with workforce planning tools and reporting platforms (Excel, PowerPoint, JIRA, Tableau, Confluence).
• Familiarity with project delivery best practices.
• Excellent stakeholder management, business acumen, and ability to influence strategy across multiple teams and business functions.