Lead System Architect, Middleware

Visa is a world leader in payments and technology, with over 259 billion payments transactions flowing safely between consumers, merchants, financial institutions, and government entities in more than 200 countries and territories each year. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable, and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses, and economies to thrive while driven by a common purpose – to uplift everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.

Make an impact with a purpose-driven industry leader. Join us today and experience Life at Visa.

Visa’s Technology Organization is a community of problem solvers and innovators reshaping the future of commerce.   We operate the world’s most sophisticated processing networks capable of handling more than 65k secure transactions a second across 80M merchants, 15k Financial Institutions, and billions of everyday people.   While working with us you’ll get to work on complex distributed systems and solve massive scale problems centered on new payment flows, business and data solutions, cyber security, and B2C platforms.  

The Lead Platform Architect will be responsible for designing and implementing projects within private and public cloud environments with an emphasis on key data store and middleware technologies. You are expected to have depth of knowledge in specified technological areas, which includes continuous availability, data protection, traditional and distributed databases, caching, event streaming, reliability architecture. A significant part of your role will be defining and documenting the architecture, capturing non-functional requirements, and preparing estimate. This role is a combination of building architecture and being a hands-on leader to implement the architecture. You will provide guidance to project teams to perform end to end design to deployment related activities, perform reviews, prevent and resolve technical issues.

The successful candidate will work with Operations and Infrastructure, Cybersecurity and Product Development teams to define architecture to meet the challenges of technology, regulatory, security, and competitive conditions. The candidate should have a positive attitude and excellent communication skills to effectively share your knowledge. 

Essential Functions

• Define and implement secure, scalable, repeatable, and highly available platform architectures, with a focus on databases, middleware, and reliability architecture. 

• Partner closely with Platform, Reliability Engineering, Product Development, Operations, and Infrastructure teams to help shape the Platform technology strategy and long-term vision. 

• Conduct proof-of-concept and proof-of-value evaluations to select the best technology and solutions that enhance the platform's capabilities. 

• Define, document, and maintain standard designs and processes for the platform, ensuring all documentation reflects the latest changes or updates. 

• Provide knowledge transfer to the engineering and operations team on the architecture and design of key platform components. 

• Participate actively in technical communities, forums, and guilds to stay updated on the latest platform technology trends and innovations.

• Mentor, coach, and guide peers in their understanding and application of platform technologies and reliability architecture, fostering a culture of continuous learning and improvement. 

• Keep abreast of industry trends in platform technologies and make strategic recommendations to help the company stay competitive. 

• Develop technology roadmaps that align with business goals and the platform technology strategy.

• Lead the architectural evaluation, analysis, and design of platform systems across all project life cycle stages.

This is a hybrid position. Hybrid employees can alternate time between both remote and office. Employees in hybrid roles are expected to work from the office 2-3 set days a week (determined by leadership/site), with a general guidepost of being in the office 50% or more of the time based on business needs.

Basic Qualifications

• 10+ years of relevant work experience with a Bachelor’s Degree or at least 7 years of work experience with an Advanced degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, MD) or 4 years of work experience with a PhD, OR 13+ years of relevant work experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• 12 or more years of work experience with a Bachelor’s Degree or 8-10 years of experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, MD) or 6+ years of work experience with a PhD
• 5+ years of hands-on experience with one or more of the traditional database technologies including DB2, Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQL Server
• 5+ years of proven experience with distributed databases such as Apache Cassandra, MongoDB, Redis, Yugabyte, CockroachDB,
• 2+ years of experience on real-time analytical store, preferably on Apache Druid, ClickHouse or similar technologies
• 2+ years of hands-on experience with database replication using products such as Oracle Golden Gate, Qlik, Q-rep or other change data capture products.
• 2+ years of experience with container technologies (e.g. Docker, OpenShift, Kubernetes) and related ecosystem products, specifically for stateful components.
• 2+ years of experience with automation using infrastructure as a code software such as Terraform, Ansible, Chef
• Hands-on experience with event streaming and message queuing technologies such as Apache Kafka.
• Strong understanding of public cloud database, Data security, and availability.
• Hands-on experience with CI/CD, specifically with database release process.
• Solid understanding of reliability architecture and chaos engineering methodologies.
• Deep knowledge of Bigdata technologies including Hadoop, Spark.
• Experience leveraging GenAI to improve the availability and reliability of platform components.
• Development experience using Java, Php or other programming languages.
• Excellent communication and presentation skills.
• Outstanding teamwork and partnership skills with the ability to work in a global environment and drive consensus in cross-functional teams.

Work Hours: Varies upon the needs of the department.

Travel Requirements: This position requires travel 5-10% of the time.

Mental/Physical Requirements: This position will be performed in an office setting.  The position will require the incumbent to sit and stand at a desk, communicate in person and by telephone, frequently operate standard office equipment, such as telephones and computers.

Visa is an EEO Employer.  Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status.  Visa will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.

Visa will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with applicable local law, including the requirements of Article 49 of the San Francisco Police Code.

U.S. APPLICANTS ONLY: The estimated salary range for a new hire into this position is 147,400.00 to 213,800.00 USD per year, which may include potential sales incentive payments (if applicable). Salary may vary depending on job-related factors which may include knowledge, skills, experience, and location. In addition, this position may be eligible for bonus and equity. Visa has a comprehensive benefits package for which this position may be eligible that includes Medical, Dental, Vision, 401 (k), FSA/HSA, Life Insurance, Paid Time Off, and Wellness Program.