Payments Architect

We’re looking for a Payments Architect to join our growing team in London. This is a senior architectural leadership role with deep payments specialism, shaping and delivering enterprise-grade payment platforms from gateway and authorisation layers through to clearing, settlement and financial management. You’ll bring strong payments domain expertise, but you won’t be boxed into payments-only work. You’re a well-rounded architect who can apply the same rigour to wider platform and enterprise challenges, flexing across domains as client priorities shift. That might mean moving from payments architecture into broader solution leadership, integration strategy, cloud platform decisions or security and identity-driven programmes. This role suits someone who thrives in complex environments and operates confidently at the intersection of business strategy and technical execution. You’ll engage across the full lifecycle, from early discovery and architectural shaping through to delivery oversight, ensuring solutions are scalable, secure, commercially viable and aligned to long-term platform strategy. In addition to payments architecture, you’ll play a key role in unifying user experience across multiple portals. You’ll drive integration strategies that deliver seamless and consistent customer journeys, supported by robust identity and access management capabilities. What you’ll be doing You’ll bring expertise in merchant acquiring and payment processing across both online and physical acceptance channels. This includes understanding gateway architecture, authorisation lifecycles, 3-D Secure (3DS) and Strong Customer Authentication (SCA), scheme integrations, tokenisation, fraud decisioning, reconciliation and settlement. You’ll also contribute to shaping integrated digital experiences, ensuring multiple user portals and systems are unified into a coherent, secure and scalable user experience supported by modern identity solutions. - Design and review scalable, resilient payment architectures capable of supporting high transaction volumes and demanding availability requirements - Define and govern non-functional requirements including latency, throughput, availability, recoverability, observability and security - Shape API strategies, integration models and event-driven or distributed system designs that support extensibility and regulatory compliance - Architect and implement Single Sign-On (SSO) and distributed identity solutions across platforms - Integrate enterprise systems with Identity Providers (IdPs), with preference for FIS Infinity IdP - Contribute to and support the configuration, maintenance and troubleshooting of IAM platforms - Ensure secure authentication, authorisation and identity federation across systems - Drive strategies to unify user portals and deliver seamless cross-platform user experiences - Contribute to PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) scoping strategies and secure-by-design approaches within cloud and hybrid environments - Participate in architectural governance forums, representing Endava with clarity and authority - Support pre-sales and bid shaping activities by defining credible, commercially grounded target-state solutions - Translate architectural decisions into clear executive narratives, articulating trade-offs, risks and investment implications - Flex across wider architecture responsibilities beyond payments when needed, applying strong architectural fundamentals to adjacent domains and evolving programmes Where appropriate, you will explore the application of emerging capabilities, including AI-driven optimisation, intelligent routing, fraud modelling and AIOps, ensuring innovation is grounded in practical, value-led use cases. How you’ll work You’ll be comfortable speaking the language of enterprise, solution and data architects, and equally confident engaging in detailed technical discussions with engineering teams or strategic conversations with business stakeholders. You’ll bring depth where it matters most, while staying adaptable as delivery needs change.