Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Cari Network is building a blockchain-based payment system for real-time movement of digital money across traditional finance and digital assets. The Principal Architect will design and build its bank-facing API platform, white-labeled wallet, and shared ledger, while leading architecture decisions and supporting bank integrations and security reviews.
Responsibilities
- Write production code for most sprints. Build critical paths yourself, create reference implementations, and review the changes that matter most across TypeScript/Node.js services and React front ends. You will own at least one product capability and ship in it
- Own the architecture of a scalable banking platform. Define service boundaries, API contracts, data models, and tenancy patterns that let Cari onboard many banks and their customers without re-architecting
- Lead the RFC process and design review. Decide within agreed guardrails, escalate cross-Cari team and bank-contract decisions, keep durable decisions documented, and keep material technical debt visible and tracked
- Own the bank API contract (B2B). Versioning, idempotency and exactly-once semantics on token transactions, webhook delivery guarantees, rate limiting and fairness across banks, and environment parity
- Own the wallet architecture across deployment models (B2B2C). Multi-tenant SaaS and on-premises packaging, bank identity integration , tenant isolation, and secure embedding (content security policy, cross-window messaging)
- Design for ledger integrity end to end. Transaction state machines, failure handling, and reconciliation and drift detection between off- and on-chain balances
- Turn non-functional requirements into built systems. Set measurable targets for resilience, performance, disaster recovery, and security, and deliver them in partnership with Cari Engineering
- Be the technical counterpart for banks. Lead architecture walkthroughs, security questionnaires, and due-diligence reviews, and define integration patterns for core banking systems and digital banking platforms
- Lead secure development. Threat modeling, penetration-test remediation, product-layer SOC 2 evidence, and software supply-chain controls in CI
- Raise the bar. Mentor principal and senior engineers, and set standards for AI-assisted development and the guardrails around it
- Comply with all Cari information security policies, including the Acceptable Use Policy, and complete required security awareness training
- Protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of Cari systems and data, including bank-partner and customer information, consistent with least-privilege access principles
Skills
- This role requires fintech or banking experience
- 12+ years building production systems, with significant time on payments, money movement, core or digital banking, or other regulated financial platforms
- Required hands-on production experience with: Kafka (event-driven architecture), Restate (durable execution and workflows), Redis, AWS EKS, and Terraform
- 3+ years as a hands-on architect or principal engineer, with a record of designing platforms that scaled across many institutional customers
- Shipped both a partner-facing API platform (B2B) and a white-labeled or embedded customer-facing product delivered through partners (B2B2C, multi-tenant)
- Deep TypeScript/Node.js and PostgreSQL; comfortable reviewing and unblocking React work
- Strong command of money-movement correctness: idempotency, sagas and outbox patterns, state machines, ledgers, and reconciliation
- API and identity security: OAuth 2.0/OIDC, mutual TLS, API key and secret rotation, signed webhooks, and OWASP practices
- Experience with bank vendor due diligence, SOC 2, or similar regulatory and security scrutiny
- Designs for operability: instrumentation, failure modes, and runbooks
- Clear written communication; RFCs and bank-facing architecture documents are core to the job
- Not a people-manager role—this is a senior individual contributor position
- Fiat payment rails: ACH, wires, RTP, FedNow
- Integrations with core banking or digital banking platforms
- Blockchain experience not required but a strong bonus—tokenized deposits, stablecoins, custody providers such as Fireblocks, EVM/zkSync, or Solidity
- Embedded SDKs, iframe or web-component delivery, and white-label theming
- Experience leading an architecture practice at an early-stage fintech through scale
Benefits
- Bonus and equity
- Full medical, vision, dental benefits
- 401(k) with company matching
- Flexible PTO
- Remote-first environment
- Opportunity to shape a market-defining protocol with an experienced founding team
Company Overview
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