Solution Architect (Remote - Work from Anywhere)

About the role

This Solution Architect role involves shaping the technical direction of a regulated crypto bank. The work includes leading an Architectural Advice Forum to guide decentralized decision-making and actively building production-grade Proofs of Concept to validate new architectural ideas. A key part of the role is partnering with the CTO on the company's AI strategy, which includes identifying opportunities, evaluating tools, and prototyping solutions to integrate AI responsibly across development and customer-facing products.

The position also focuses on standardizing engineering practices across backend, web, and mobile development. This includes defining the quality bar for engineering, embedding security-first architecture, and championing Domain-Driven Design and Event-Driven Architecture. The architect will work closely with the Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) team on system reliability, capacity, incident response, observability, and the evolution of the internal developer platform.

Success in this role means proactively identifying and resolving systemic technical risks, technical debt, and cross-team dependencies before they impact production. The Solution Architect is also responsible for coaching and mentoring engineers across various teams and maintaining the company's engineering principles and Tech Radar. This individual will influence technical direction and foster a culture of continuous improvement within a globally distributed team.

The annual salary for this position is between $150,000 and $250,000 USD.

Skills that matter here

• Cloud-native architecture: This skill is essential for designing and implementing scalable and resilient systems in a cloud environment.
• Architectural governance: The role involves owning and facilitating a forum for architectural decisions and ensuring adherence to established guidelines.
• Distributed systems: Deep experience with distributed, event-driven systems is required for building and operating the bank's core infrastructure.
• Domain-Driven Design: This approach is championed by the role to structure complex software systems effectively.
• AI strategy: The architect will partner with the CTO to define and implement the company's approach to artificial intelligence.
• Security architecture: A core responsibility is embedding security-first principles into all architectural designs and implementations.

Who this role suits

• A hands-on engineer with at least 10 years of software engineering experience, including 3+ years in a senior individual contributor architectural role.
• Someone who thrives on leading by influence rather than authority, capable of guiding technical direction across diverse teams.
• An individual with practical experience in regulated fintech, payments, or banking environments.
• A person with a strong understanding of modern AI/ML concepts and their application in production systems.

From the employer

• Own and facilitate the Architectural Advice Forum (AAF), driving decentralised decision-making that is captured as ADRs.
• Personally build production-grade Proofs of Concept to de-risk new patterns, validate architectural ideas and demonstrate “what good looks like” ahead of broader adoption.
• Partner with the CTO on Xapo’s AI strategy, identifying high-value opportunities, evaluating tooling, prototyping solutions and helping engineering teams adopt AI responsibly across the SDLC and our customer-facing products.
• Own cross-cutting standardisation across backend, web and mobile engineering, patterns, paradigms, observability, security, testing and delivery.
• Define and uphold the engineering quality bar across backend, web and mobile.
• Embed Security-First Architecture across everything we build.
• Champion Domain-Driven Design and Event-Driven Architecture.
• Work closely with the SRE team on reliability, capacity, incident response, observability and the evolution of our internal developer platform.
• Coach and mentor engineers across SATs, platform and enabling teams.
• Surface and unblock systemic technical risks, technical debt and cross-team dependencies before they hit production.
• Maintain Xapo’s engineering principles and Tech Radar.

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including 3+ years in an Architect, Staff or equivalent senior-IC role.
• A strong track record as a hands-on engineer-turned-architect.
• Deep experience designing, building and operating distributed, event-driven systems in production.
• Hands-on experience with Domain-Driven Design.
• Practical familiarity with decentralised architectural governance.
• Demonstrated ability to lead by influence rather than authority.
• Experience working in regulated fintech, payments or banking environments.
• Deep experience designing security-first architectures.
• A strong perspective on modern AI/ML, LLMs, agents and applied AI in production.
• Excellent written and verbal communication.

• Impact Globally, Work Remotely.
• Great work-life balance with flexible PTO.
• Collaborate, learn, and grow with a high-performance team.
• Yearly budget for individual learning and development goals.