[Remote] Principal Architect – Product Engineering

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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