Senior Manager, Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) Architect, TC FS in London

Location: London

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Digital assets in the UK are entering a more practical phase, moving beyond pilots towards real products, operating models and market infrastructure. That shift is creating important strategic choices for financial institutions across banking, markets, payments, wealth and asset management. It’s creating phenomenal market momentum and transformation potential.

Within EY’s Financial Services Tech Consulting team, we’re looking to expand our team to help clients navigate this transition and turn momentum into tangible outcomes. You will contribute to the delivery of high profile and complex tech engagements across a wide range of financial services clients.

The opportunity

We are seeking a Senior Manager – DLT Architect to lead the technical architecture, design, and implementation of distributed ledger and digital asset platforms across complex financial services environments. This role is suited to a deep technologist and hands‑on architect, with strong experience designing DLT based platforms, who can translate business and regulatory requirements into secure, scalable production‑grade architectures and guide engineering teams through delivery.

Your key responsibilities

• Own the end‑to‑end technical architecture for DLT‑based platforms (e.g. tokenised deposits, on‑chain settlement, custody, registry, and orchestration layers).
• Design logical, physical, and deployment architectures covering on‑chain and off‑chain components, integration patterns, data flows, and non‑functional requirements.
• Make architecture choices across DLT protocols (e.g. Corda, Ethereum‑based platforms, Hyperledger), consensus models, privacy models, and interoperability approaches.
• Define reference architectures and reusable architectural patterns for digital asset and DLT use cases.

Smart Contracts & On‑chain Design

• Lead the design and review of smart contracts and on‑chain workflows, ensuring correctness, security, auditability, and upgrade mechanisms.
• Define patterns for token models, lifecycle management, permissions, and role‑based access on‑chain.
• Ensure smart contract and ledger design aligns with legal, regulatory, and operational requirements.
• Design integration between DLT platforms and core banking systems, payments rails, custody platforms, trade processing, and market infrastructure.
• Architect API‑first and event‑driven integration patterns, including middleware, messaging, and orchestration layers.
• Ensure interoperability across multiple DLTs and external ecosystems where required.

Security, Privacy & Resilience

• Own the security architecture of DLT platforms, including key management, identity, wallet design, signing models, and secure transaction flows.
• Design solutions that meet enterprise security, data privacy, resilience, and regulatory standards.
• Lead threat modelling and support security reviews, audits, and penetration testing.

Cloud, Infrastructure & DevOps

• Define deployment architectures across cloud and hybrid environments, including containerisation, Kubernetes, and infrastructure‑as‑code.
• Design CI/CD pipelines for both on‑chain and off‑chain components, including smart contract build, test, and deployment.
• Ensure solutions are production‑ready, scalable, observable, and operable.

Technical Leadership & Governance

• Act as a technical authority on DLT architecture decisions across programmes and client engagements.
• Lead architecture forums, design reviews, and technical governance processes.
• Mentor architects, engineers, and senior consultants, raising overall DLT engineering capability.

Client & Stakeholder Engagement

• Work directly with senior technology, architecture, and product stakeholders at banks, market infrastructure providers, and regulators.
• Translate complex technical concepts into clear, structured discussions for non‑technical audiences.
• Support pre‑sales activity through architecture proposals, RFP responses, and technical deep dives.

Product & Solution Strategy (Client Advisory + Market POV)

• Define and lead client‑facing strategies and roadmaps for digital asset payments, including stablecoin settlement, tokenised deposits, and cross‑border/tokenised cash rails.
• Design scalable and sustainable technology architecture.
• Bring thought‑provoking perspectives and EY points of view to challenge client thinking and shape investment decisions, especially where technology, regulation, and operating model trade‑offs are involved.
• Track market trends and regulatory developments, converting them into clear client implications, decisions, and execution plans.

Skills and attributes for success

You will bring a passion for delivering an exceptional client service experience. You have a collaborative mind‑set. You will be outcome focused, but also intellectually curious with a creative approach to problem solving. You have excellent written, listening and verbal communication skills and a track record of building and maintaining relationships with stakeholders. You bring strong analytical skills and are confident in tackling new topics.

To qualify for the role you must have:

• Strong hands on experience as a solution / platform / technical architect in complex distributed systems.
• Deep expertise in DLT and blockchain architectures, ideally within financial services.
• Experience with smart contract (e.g. Solidity based chains) and secure on‑chain design.
• Strong understanding of payments, settlement, custody, capital markets, or banking platforms.
• Proven experience designing secure, high availability, low latency systems.
• Solid cloud and infrastructure knowledge (e.g. AWS/Azure, containers, IaC, CI/CD).
• Strong grasp of non‑functional requirements: security, performance, resilience, scalability, and compliance.
• Experience with cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, or GCP) in regulated environments.
• Familiarity with messaging and eventing (Kafka, service buses, async workflows).
• Exposure to cryptography concepts relevant to digital assets (keys, signatures, hashing, MPC, HSMs).
• Strong communication skills — able to explain complex technical topics to non‑technical stakeholders.
• Intellectual curiosity and comfort operating in fast‑evolving problem spaces.

Ideally, you’ll also have:

• Experience working in the financial services industry.
• A good range of influencing skills.
• A constructive and action‑oriented approach.
• A self‑starting attitude with the ability to think and act quickly.
• Experience working in a client facing professional services environment.
• An ability to guide and coach team members to help them develop their EY careers.
• Experience operating in a project‑based environment.

What we look for

We are seeking tech professionals, with good knowledge of DLT and digital assets processes and products, to join our growing team to build our business and support our clients build more resilient, efficient and profitable businesses.

What we offer

We offer an attractive remuneration package where you’ll be rewarded for your performance. Our comprehensive Total Rewards package includes support for flexible working and career development, and with FlexEY you can select benefits that suit your needs, covering holidays, health and well‑being, insurance, savings and a wide range of discounts, offers and promotions.

• Continuous learning: You’ll develop the mindset and skills to navigate whatever comes next.
• Success as defined by you: We’ll provide the tools and flexibility, so you can make a meaningful impact, your way.
• Transformative leadership: We’ll give you the insights, coaching and confidence to be the leader the world needs.
• Diverse and inclusive culture: You’ll be embraced for who you are and empowered to use your voice to help others find theirs.