Ignite Banking

Role Description We are seeking a Business Solutions Architect who combines strong banking domain expertise with a solid understanding of technology and systems. This is a highly client-facing consulting role where you will serve as a trusted advisor, helping bridge business and technology teams to deliver successful outcomes for our clients. The Business Solutions Architect serves as a strategic and hands-on partner to client business, operations, compliance, and technology teams. This role is responsible for understanding business objectives, analyzing current-state processes, identifying opportunities for improvement, and helping clients navigate complex technology and operational transformations. The ideal candidate brings experience working on banking technology initiatives and can confidently engage stakeholders across varying levels of technical and business sophistication. Success in this role requires strong analytical thinking, excellent communication skills, a consultative mindset, and the ability to translate complex business needs into practical, actionable solutions. What You'll Do - Stakeholder Engagement & Consulting: - Serve as a trusted advisor to client stakeholders throughout transformation and implementation initiatives. - Build strong relationships across business, operations, compliance, and technology teams. - Facilitate discovery sessions, requirements workshops, and solution discussions. - Communicate complex concepts clearly to both executive and operational audiences. - Challenge assumptions constructively and help stakeholders make informed decisions. - Business Analysis & Solution Design: - Analyze existing business processes, identify inefficiencies, and uncover opportunities for improvement. - Lead requirements gathering and documentation efforts, including business requirements, functional specifications, workflows, and process maps. - Collaborate with client teams and vendor partners to evaluate solution options and recommend approaches that balance business objectives, scalability, operational efficiency, and regulatory requirements. - Assess business impacts associated with new systems, integrations, and technology deployments. - Translate complex processes into clear visual and written documentation that supports design, testing, and implementation activities. - Implementation, Testing & Change Enablement: - Support banking technology implementations, platform migrations, and transformation initiatives from discovery through deployment. - Lead or support User Acceptance Testing (UAT) efforts, including test planning, test case development, execution coordination, defect management, and business validation activities. - Partner with business and technology teams to ensure solutions meet functional, operational, and regulatory requirements prior to production deployment. - Help clients navigate organizational change and adoption of new technologies and processes. - Monitor implementation outcomes and identify opportunities for continuous improvement following go-live. Qualifications - 5+ years of experience in banking, fintech, consulting, business analysis, business architecture, product delivery, or solution design. - Strong understanding of banking operations, workflows, and technology ecosystems. - Experience participating in banking technology implementations, platform migrations, integration projects, or transformation initiatives. - Proven ability to gather requirements, facilitate workshops, and drive stakeholder alignment. - Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with the ability to break down complex challenges and identify practical solutions. - Exceptional written and verbal communication skills. - Ability to quickly learn client systems, processes, products, and terminology. - Strong client-facing consulting skills with the ability to build credibility and trust. - Experience supporting technology implementations, platform migrations, or UAT activities within banking or financial services environments. Preferred Experience - Experience in one or more of the following areas: - Digital banking implementations - Treasury management platforms - Core banking modernization or conversion initiatives - Banking technology implementations - Fintech integrations - Commercial banking operations - Payments and cash management - User Acceptance Testing (UAT), business validation, and implementation readiness activities Preferred Technical & Industry Experience - Familiarity with banking platforms such as Fiserv, Finxact, Bottomline, Q2, Savana, or similar solutions. - Working knowledge of BSA/AML, OFAC, and related banking regulatory requirements. - Experience with Jira, Miro, Lucid, Figma, Visio, or similar collaboration and process-mapping tools. - Bachelor's degree in Business, Finance, Information Systems, or a related field. What Makes Someone Successful in This Role - Naturally consultative and collaborative. - Comfortable navigating ambiguity and solving complex business challenges. - Able to bridge the gap between business stakeholders and technical teams. - Detail-oriented while maintaining a strategic perspective. - Comfortable working directly with clients and influencing decisions. - Takes ownership and is willing to roll up their sleeves to drive outcomes. - Passionate about helping financial institutions modernize and improve how they operate. Company Description Ignite Banking is a consulting firm that partners with financial institutions on complex transformation initiatives, helping banks modernize operations, implement new technologies, and improve customer and employee experiences. Our team works directly with clients on high-impact projects including digital banking implementations, core modernization programs, treasury and payments initiatives, platform migrations, process transformation, and technology integration efforts.

Position Overview Ignite Banking is seeking a Senior Microservices Engineer with deep experience in API development, APIGEE, and IBM DataPower to support the delivery of next-generation open finance and digital banking platforms. This role sits within our API Banking & Integrations team, working directly with client architecture and engineering teams to design and build modern, scalable integration solutions. This is a hands-on development lead role — you will be expected to actively design, build, and deliver microservices and APIs, while also guiding technical direction and setting standards across engagements. This is not a purely oversight or architecture role; success in this position requires strong engineering execution paired with the ability to lead by example. This is not a traditional development role — this individual will operate as a front-line consultant (“tip of the spear”), leading early-stage technical execution across multiple engagements. You will be expected to bring both strong engineering capability and a consultative mindset, helping clients navigate complex transformation initiatives. This role is remote, however, strong preference will be given to candidates located in Charlotte or Raleigh, NC, who are open to working onsite with clients several days per week as engagement needs require. Key Responsibilities API & Microservices Development - Design, develop, and maintain Java-based microservices (Spring Boot) supporting digital banking and open finance use cases - Build and expose APIs through APIGEE, including proxy configuration, policies, authentication, shared workflows, and routing - Develop reusable service patterns for system-to-system integrations across banking platforms - Implement API contracts, validation logic, and transformation layers (JSON/XML) API Gateway & Integration Layer - Design and implement API gateway solutions using APIGEE and IBM DataPower - Configure API proxies, security policies (OAuth2, mTLS), rate limiting, and traffic management - Support migration and modernization from legacy integration patterns to API-first architectures Cloud & Platform Engineering - Deploy and manage microservices in Azure cloud environments, including Kubernetes (AKS) - Work with DevOps teams to support CI/CD pipelines and containerized deployments - Ensure secure connectivity, certificate management, and network integration across environments Consulting & Client Engagement - Act as a lead technical contributor in client engagements, helping shape solution direction early - Work directly with client architects, engineering teams, and stakeholders to define and refine integration approaches - Translate business and architectural requirements into practical, scalable technical solutions - Provide guidance on best practices for API design, integration strategy, and platform modernization Testing, Debugging & Performance - Build and execute unit, integration, and performance tests - Troubleshoot distributed systems using logs, tracing, and monitoring tools - Optimize services for performance, resiliency, and scalability in real-time environments Required Skills & Experience Core Engineering - 5+ years of experience building Java-based microservices (Spring Boot) - Strong experience designing and implementing REST APIs - Hands-on experience with APIGEE (proxies, policies, API products, developer apps, security) - Experience with IBM DataPower in API gateway or integration roles - Strong understanding of API design, JSON/XML, and service orchestration Cloud & Platform - Experience deploying services in Azure environments - Working knowledge of Kubernetes (AKS) and containerized applications - Familiarity with secure service-to-service communication (OAuth2, mTLS) Consulting Experience (Critical) - Prior experience working in a consulting or professional services environment - Ability to operate independently in client environments with limited direction - Strong communication skills with the ability to engage both technical and business stakeholders - Comfortable leading early-stage technical work and shaping solution direction Banking & Integration Experience - Experience working within banking or financial services environments - Familiarity with digital banking platforms, core banking integrations, or open banking architectures - Understanding of enterprise integration patterns and modernization strategies Preferred Skills - Experience modernizing legacy integration platforms into API-first architectures - Exposure to event-driven or distributed system design patterns - Familiarity with observability tools (App Insights, Splunk, Dynatrace, etc.) What Success Looks Like - You quickly establish credibility with client engineering teams - You operate independently while maintaining alignment with architecture - You deliver high-quality, production-ready microservices and APIs - You help clients move from legacy integration patterns to modern API-driven ecosystems - You contribute to both delivery and growth across multiple engagements Who You Are - A consultative engineer — not just a developer - Comfortable being the first technical resource on the ground in a new engagement - Able to balance hands-on execution with strategic thinking - Strong ownership mindset with a bias toward action - Thrive in fast-paced, high-visibility environments