About the role
Senior Technical Practitioner — Financial Services
About the Opportunity
We are looking for a Senior Technical Practitioner to join a long-term engagement with a fast-growing, technology-driven financial services organization.
This is a highly senior, hands-on individual contributor opportunity for someone who can operate as a peer to experienced engineering teams, shape architecture, identify technical risks, and solve complex, ambiguous problems.
This is not a traditional staff-augmentation or ticket-delivery role. You will be expected to bring independent technical judgment, challenge assumptions, review architectural and engineering decisions, and transfer knowledge to the broader organization.
What You'll Do
* Work closely with senior engineering and technology stakeholders to solve complex, ambiguous technical problems.
* Shape and review architecture for highly scalable, secure, and reliable financial systems.
* Design and improve production-critical systems involving payments, transaction processing, banking infrastructure, ledgers, or related financial platforms.
* Investigate complex technical issues beyond surface-level troubleshooting and identify underlying risks and opportunities.
* Challenge technical assumptions and provide clear, actionable recommendations.
* Participate in architecture and code reviews with highly experienced engineers.
* Drive initiatives from problem definition through solution, without requiring detailed task decomposition or constant supervision.
* Help establish engineering best practices around reliability, security, observability, and operational excellence.
* Share expertise and mentor experienced engineers through hands-on collaboration and technical discussions.
* Operate comfortably in an environment where requirements may be evolving and problems are not always clearly defined.
What We're Looking For
* 15+ years of relevant software engineering experience.
* Proven experience operating at Staff, Principal, Architect, or equivalent senior individual-contributor level.
* Strong track record designing, building, and owning complex production systems.
* Deep experience within financial services, such as: * Banking systems * Payments infrastructure * Transaction processing * Ledgers and financial data systems * Regulated financial infrastructure * Other production-critical, high-stakes financial systems
* Strong AWS expertise, particularly in complex production environments.
* Hands-on experience with areas such as: * Reliability and resilience * Security * Observability * Infrastructure architecture * Operating production workloads in regulated environments
* Ability to independently frame problems, investigate deeply, identify risks, and drive solutions.
* Strong communication skills and the ability to work directly with highly experienced technical peers.
* Willingness to constructively challenge existing technical decisions when appropriate.
* Demonstrated ability to transfer knowledge and raise the technical capability of the wider engineering organization.
Particularly Relevant Experience
Experience with any of the following will be highly valuable:
* Cross-border payments
* International remittances
* Multi-currency systems
* Digital banking or fintech platforms
* Financial ledgers
* Payment processing at scale
* Regulated financial services environments
* Experience with regulatory frameworks such as ADGM, DFSA, FCA, EU equivalents, or comparable jurisdictions
What Success Looks Like
The successful candidate is someone who:
* Can take an undefined technical problem and create structure around it.
* Doesn't wait for problems to be fully decomposed before taking action.
* Has the technical depth to challenge decisions made by other senior engineers.
* Can identify risks that may not be immediately obvious.
* Makes pragmatic, technically sound recommendations.
* Has personally owned systems operating at meaningful production scale.
* Can move fluidly between hands-on engineering, architecture, technical review, and mentoring.
* Acts as a trusted technical peer rather than simply an execution resource.
Location & Engagement
* Location: Ideally EMEA
* Engagement: Full-time
* Duration: Long-term
* Working hours: Must have meaningful overlap with Dubai / Gulf Standard Time (UTC+4)
* Relocation: There may be an opportunity or requirement to relocate to Dubai depending on the long-term engagement and mutual fit.
Interview Process
The process is expected to assess both technical depth and senior-level problem solving, including:
* Case-based architecture: Working through an ambiguous real-world technical problem.
* Systems design: Designing systems at scale, particularly around payments, ledgers, transaction processing, or cross-border financial infrastructure.
* AWS deep dive: Reliability, security, observability, and infrastructure decisions in production and regulated environments.
* Senior-level collaboration: Examples of challenging technical decisions, influencing peers, mentoring experienced engineers, and independently driving complex initiatives.