Principal Solution Architect

Job description

# About the job As a Principal Solutions Architect at Backbase, you help banks integrate BankingOS with their existing technology and build solutions for Digital Banking and Agentic Banking. You combine architecture expertise with hands-on development. You work with AI models, agent frameworks, APIs and integrations to build prototypes, test ideas and understand what works in practice. You work alongside Solutions Engineers to design the overall architecture, connecting BankingOS with the bank’s systems, data and security requirements. You explain technical decisions to executives, architects and engineers, and adjust your approach based on testing and evidence. This is a senior individual contributor role focused on technical design, practical experimentation and mentoring colleagues. You also contribute to product improvements and develop reusable architecture patterns. ## What you'll own - **Work with bank technology teams:** Understand their technical requirements and help them make architecture decisions. - **Design BankingOS integrations:** Define how banking journeys, AI agents, data and existing systems connect through APIs, events and other integration patterns. - **Design Agentic Banking solutions:** Define how AI agents use data and tools, including permissions, human approvals, testing and traceability. - **Address AI limitations:** Assess reliability, hallucinations, privacy and agent autonomy. Test solutions and define where additional controls are needed. - **Build and test prototypes:** Work directly with AI agents, knowledge retrieval, tools and integrations. Investigate failures and use the results to improve the architecture. - **Plan for production:** Consider performance, security, reliability, cost and implementation effort. Document the architecture in the Digital Solution Document (DSD) and align customer teams, Services and partners on delivery requirements. - **Lead technical evaluations:** Run architecture workshops, technical assessments and RFP responses. Explain how the proposed solution meets requirements and where compromises may be needed. - **Share technical knowledge:** Build demos, reusable components and architecture patterns. Mentor colleagues and help them apply new technologies in customer projects. - **Contribute to product development:** Share customer feedback and testing lessons with the product team to help improve BankingOS. ## What you'll bring - Experience designing complex enterprise solutions in customer-facing architecture or technical consulting. - Practical experience building AI applications and agent workflows, including an understanding of their limitations and trade-offs. - Strong knowledge of enterprise integration, distributed systems, APIs, event-driven architectures, and cloud-native deployment. - Engineering experience with Java, Spring, identity and access management, DevOps and modern cloud platforms. - Understanding of security, data privacy, access permissions and operational resilience in banking or other regulated industries. - Ability to explain technical decisions to executives, architects and engineers and connect them to business requirements. - A hands-on approach to testing new technologies, building prototypes and sharing knowledge with colleagues. - Ability to work independently, solve technical problems and make decisions when requirements are unclear. - Experience mentoring colleagues and willingness to travel for customer engagements approximately **25% of the time**.