Visa is a world leader in digital payments, facilitating more than 215 billion payments transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across 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.

When you join Visa, you join a culture of purpose and belonging – where your growth is priority, your identity is embraced, and the work you do matters. We believe that economies that include everyone everywhere, uplift everyone everywhere. Your work will have a direct impact on billions of people around the world – helping unlock financial access to enable the future of money movement.

Join Visa: A Network Working for Everyone.

Essential Functions

As Lead Systems Architect, you will lead and manage several strategic initiatives in the Visa Direct group.

The architecture group in Visa Direct is a closely knit team that oversees and provides strategic direction on several regional/market-specific and horizontal/cross-cutting initiatives. They ensure that the solutions we build is in alignment with the architecture and software target state of the platform.

As Lead Systems Architect, you will need to innovate around solution approaches in a way that can delivering value in an agile, incremental fashion to our clients, while at the same time ensuring that broader architectural goals/tenets are met. In that sense, architects need to be able to don both the product-owner and the core technology owner hats simultaneously at ease.  The role will involve closely collaborating with a global network of architects and business folks across Visa to achieve the objectives.

Key payment flows such as Push-to-Card, Push-to-Account and Push-to-Wallet are handled in Visa Direct. In addition, several core horizontal platform/infrastructure services that form building blocks for numerous product lines internally within Visa are also under the architecture group's radar.

Architects deliver high level architecture and design artifacts for several such large initiatives. In addition, architect guide development teams on detailed design artifacts. The architecture group is a core part of the engineering team participating in the entire software development lifecycle. You will play a key role in ensuring business requirements are translated into secure, scalable, and efficient software system designs.

Whenever the need arises, you will need to be able to roll up your sleeves and quickly prototype new approaches to demonstrate viability of creative initiatives/ideas/technologies. You will provide the thought leadership on existing and emerging payment trends to develop a vision for specific areas of solution with an eye toward applicability across the greater client base. You will also stay abreast of new technology trends, innovations, and asks from Visa's strategic partners to enhance our existing products or create new solutions with a faster time-to-market.

If you enjoy working in a fast-paced organization, a good problem solver, have a passion for using architecture to solving challenging business problems, and have an innovative spirit, we would love to hear from you.

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 Qualification

• 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 Qualification

• 10+ years of relevant work experience and a Bachelors degree, OR 13+ years of relevant work experience
• 3 years of work experience with a PhD in delivering enterprise-class, mission-critical, commercial and scalable products, at least 4 of which were in the role of an architect or a lead developer.
• Very strong interpersonal, facilitation, team building, and leadership skills along with effective communication (both written and verbal) skills and the ability to present complex ideas in a clear, concise way, ability to influence and develop relationships with key partners
• Proven experience as Systems Architect or in a similar role, with a track record of successfully delivering complex software systems.
• Expertise in designing distributed systems and microservices architectures.
• Solid knowledge of one or more programming languages. Java language preferred.
• Experience with containerization technologies and orchestration tools (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to analyze complex systems to identify opportunities for improvement.
• Ability to quickly churn proof-of-concepts/prototypes as needed to demonstrate new ideas or approaches.
• Solid knowledge of secure software development lifecycle and security practices.
• Extensive experience in API design and in system and component design with attention to API security
• Working knowledge of Data and related technologies (RDBMS, NoSQL, Big Data, Kafka, Spark, etc.)
• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering or related technical field required. Masters Degree or other advanced degree preferred.
• 12+ years of relevant experience with 3+ years of experience in technical leadership role.
• Knowledge of current emerging payment trends, players, and competitive landscape
• Good understanding on emerging technology trends in the fields of systems, data, AI that can be used to deliver innovative solutions.
• API-first mindset when building products
• Experience in using UI frameworks (micro-frontend)
• Strong DevOps culture and related technologies that help the organization to deliver solutions with faster time-to-marker and with higher-quality with a customer-centric approach

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 139,800.00 to 181,800.00 USD, 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.