Principal Architect, Risk

Paysafe is a global payments platform powering the experience economy, with a strong focus on the iGaming, video gaming, e-commerce, retail, travel and hospitality sectors. With 30 years of expertise in payment technology, Paysafe helps businesses and consumers lift every experience through seamless, secure payment solutions, including card payments, digital wallets such as Skrill, eCash solutions like PaysafeCard, and a suite of local payment methods. With approximately 2,900 employees across 12 countries and annualized transactional volume of $167 billion in 2025, Paysafe connects people and businesses worldwide through innovative digital payment experiences.

We are seeking a senior, strategic Principal Architect – Risk Platform to define and drive the architectural vision of Paysafe’s global Risk capabilities. This is not a narrow solution role. Risk at Paysafe does not operate with traditional product teams. As such, this architect will:

• Act as the architectural authority and product-level thought partner for Risk
• Translate regulatory and commercial objectives into scalable platform capabilities
• Define the long‑term Risk technology roadmap
• Shape how we build, integrate, orchestrate, and evolve risk engines globally

You will operate at the intersection of architecture, regulation, platform engineering, and product strategy.

What Paysafe stands for:

• Being open and honest.
• Keeping focused.
• Operating with Courage.
• Pioneering the future.

Our values and culture are driven by Equality, Development, Social Responsibility and Wellbeing.

How we work: We follow a hybrid working model, spending an average of three days per week at our office location. The office is located in Gresham Street next to St Paul’s cathedral with easy access and transport links via St Paul’s, Bank, Cannon Street, City Thameslink, Liverpool Street, Farringdon, Mansion House.

What You Will Own

1. Risk Platform Vision & Architecture
   • Define and evolve the target architecture for the global Risk Platform
   • Design end‑to‑end architectures for:
   • Merchant underwriting and KYB
   • Transaction risk screening (real‑time)
   • Merchant monitoring
   • AML transaction monitoring
   • PEP & sanctions screening
   • Identity verification & device intelligence
   • Ongoing due diligence and regulatory reporting
2. Establish domain boundaries and service decomposition for risk capabilities
3. Define scalable API contracts and event‑driven flows for decisioning and reporting
4. Regulatory Translation into Architecture
   • Lead structured discovery sessions with:
   • Risk
   • Compliance
   • Legal
   • Regulatory
   • KYC / AML
   • Fraud
   • Sanctions
5. Translate AML, CDD/EDD, PSD2/PSD3, EMI licensing, and regional regulatory obligations into:
• Platform capabilities
• Audit‑ready data models
• Traceable decision workflows
6. Ensure architectures support:
• Regulatory explainability
• Model governance
• Audit trails
• Data lineage
• Reporting obligations across UK, EU, and US
7. Real‑Time Risk & Event‑Driven Decisioning
   • Architect high‑availability, low‑latency decisioning systems
   • Define integration patterns for:
   • ML‑driven risk engines
   • Rule engines
   • Real‑time scoring
8. Design event‑driven architectures using:
• Kafka / streaming frameworks
• Asynchronous workflows
• Orchestration and fallback strategies
9. Ensure deterministic and observable decision pipelines
10. Vendor & Ecosystem Orchestration
    • Architect integrations with external risk/compliance vendors such as:
    • LexisNexis
    • Ekata
    • Device intelligence providers
    • AML engines
    • Sanctions screening services
11. Define:
• Vendor abstraction layers
• Data mapping strategies
• Orchestration patterns
• Vendor substitution capability
• Fallback and resilience patterns
12. Reduce lock‑in while preserving regulatory robustness
13. Cloud‑Native Platform Engineering
    • Design cloud‑native, horizontally scalable risk services in AWS/Azure
    • Define:
    • Microservices architecture
    • API gateway strategies
    • Identity and access control models
    • Data partitioning and sovereignty controls
14. Architect for:
• Multi‑region resiliency
• Active‑active failover
• Regulatory data residency constraints
15. Establish patterns for:
• Observability
• Traceability
• Secure secret management
• Infrastructure as Code
16. Data & Reporting Architecture
    • Design structured, semi‑structured, and event‑based data persistence strategies
    • Support:
    • Real‑time decisioning
    • Batch AML monitoring
    • Regulatory reporting
17. Define golden‑source data domains for:
• Merchants
• Transactions
• Risk signals
• Case management
18. Ensure compatibility with enterprise data lake and analytics platforms
19. Architectural Governance & Leadership
    • Act as trusted adviser to Risk leadership
    • Influence roadmap prioritization and capability sequencing
    • Mentor engineers and domain architects
    • Drive architecture standards and review forums
    • Collaborate across Merchant, Consumer, and Platform engineering groups

Technical Expertise Required:

• 10+ years in architecture and engineering roles
• Deep experience in risk and compliance systems within fintech or payments
• Proven expertise in:

• Real‑time transaction risk screening
• AML transaction monitoring
• Merchant underwriting & KYB
• Credit risk monitoring
• Sanctions & PEP screening

• Microservices architectures
• Event‑driven architectures
• Kafka / streaming systems
• API‑first design
• Secure coding best practices

• C# / .NET or Java / Spring Boot

Domain & Regulatory Knowledge

• Strong understanding of:

• AMLD requirements
• PSD2 / PSD3
• PCI DSS
• EMI / E‑money licensing constraints
• UK FCA expectations

• Model governance frameworks
• Explainable AI in risk decisioning
• Audit and regulatory inspection readiness

What Makes This Role Different

This is not a “draw diagrams and move on” architect. You will be building the control tower of the company. You will:

• Shape the Risk Platform as a product
• Influence regulatory readiness at architectural level
• Design systems that protect Paysafe’s balance sheet
• Enable commercial growth while reducing fraud and regulatory exposure

Ideal Profile

• Systems thinker with regulatory fluency
• Comfortable in ambiguity
• Commercially aware
• Can challenge stakeholders constructively
• Able to operate at board‑level discussions and deep technical reviews

A snippet of what you’ll get in return:

• Make your day work for you with our flexible working hours.
• You decide what your holiday looks like with the option to buy or sell your holiday and carry over up to 5 days into the next year.
• Enjoy social events on our roof top terrace with views onto St Pauls Cathedral.
• Our fully equipped facilities include showers, hairdryers and straighteners and fresh towels.
• Start your day with a free breakfast, fresh fruit and snacks.
• Take a breather in our dedicated wellbeing room.
• Spend time with those important to you with our enhanced paid family policies.
• Test our products Skrill and Neteller. Upon joining we will award you £50 into each wallet.
• Enjoy our discounts on memberships via vitality including, gyms, leisure centres, yoga/Pilates across the country.
• Need a new Laptop or TV? We offer support purchasing Apple and LG products via Stormfront technology.
• Join our six employee‑led equality communities and help foster a workplace that celebrates diversity and create opportunities to collaborate and learn.
• Give back to the community with four paid charity days.
• Kickstart your weekend early with our summer hours during the months of June, July and August with a 3pm finish every Friday.

Let’s not forget, we also offer: Private health insurance (pre‑existing conditions are included) & dental insurance, income protection, life assurance and more.

What to expect next:

• Phone screen with Talent Acquisition
• Video introduction with the Hiring Manager
• Technical interviews with members of the team
• Business interview with key stakeholder
• Invited into the office for HR interview and to meet the team

If you’re successful joining the team, you’ll be meeting our CEO in person during our new joiners breakfast in London – a great opportunity to network with your peers.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Paysafe is an equal opportunity employer. We value diversity and are committed to providing a work environment of mutual respect to everyone without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances.