Senior Technical Practitioner - Financial Services

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. Originally posted on Himalayas