Technical Architect (Payment Platform)

About Us
Hello Clever is building the next generation of payments and loyalty infrastructure by turning every transaction into growth for merchants.
We're an AI-powered fintech operating across 26+ markets, helping businesses move money in real time and convert payments into measurable outcomes like higher repeat rates, bigger baskets, and smarter customer engagement. Our platform combines local account-to-account rails, embedded cashback and loyalty products, and powerful data intelligence through Clever AI, so merchants can launch offers, optimise ROI, and scale faster, all through a single integration.
We recently crossed $70M in live ARR and are on track to pass $100M by the end of 2026-just 2.3 years after reaching our first $1M. It's an exciting milestone that reflects the scale of what we're building and the opportunity ahead.
We're also proud to be recognised on the global stage, including being named Australia's fastest-growing fintech, recognised in Forbes Asia's Top 100, ranked among the AFR Fastest-Growing Companies, and selected for Inc. Magazine's Best in Business.
About The Role
As a Technical Architect at Hello Clever, you'll own the platform's application architecture and technical roadmap, shaping how our payment infrastructure scales globally. You'll drive practical solutions across Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, and distributed systems, ensuring payment flows remain accurate, secure, and reliable. Working closely with engineering, product, and DevOps teams, you'll guide regional architecture, improve performance and production resilience, and provide hands-on technical leadership.
What You'll Do
Platform Architecture: Own application architecture and the technical roadmap, guiding the platform's evolution through practical design decisions and incremental improvements.
Solution Design & Systems Thinking: Act as a key problem solver when product teams face complex technical or cross-functional challenges, translating them into practical solutions.
Payment Correctness & Concurrency: Ensure payment and balance flows remain correct under concurrency and partial failures through sound transaction boundaries, idempotency, locking, and reconciliation.
Integration Reliability: Establish integration patterns that handle external service failures and recover safely without losing or duplicating transactions.
Performance & Database Engineering: Drive performance improvements across the Rails platform and establish database engineering standards that support safe, sustainable growth.
Global Architecture & Cloud Platform: Design the AU/US/JP architecture to support regional operations within data residency boundaries. Partner with DevOps to lead the phased migration onto AKS using repeatable infrastructure.
Production Reliability: Establish measurable reliability objectives and lead investigations into complex incidents, ensuring improvements address root causes.
Security & Data Protection: Embed security and data protection into platform architecture, working with relevant stakeholders to translate requirements into effective technical controls.
Technical Leadership: Guide engineers through design and implementation, communicate architectural trade-offs clearly, and remain hands-on with critical technical work.
AI Engineering & Integration: Establish AI-assisted development practices with independent validation, and collaborate with AI engineers on reliable, secure integration of AI capabilities.
What We're Looking For
Experience: 8+ years in software engineering, including 2+ years as a Technical Architect, Principal Engineer, or Technical Lead with ownership of architecture and production delivery.
Ruby on Rails: Strong hands-on expertise building and operating Rails applications at scale, with the ability to diagnose and resolve complex application performance issues.
PostgreSQL: Deep knowledge of data modelling, indexing, query plans, transactions and isolation levels, locking, connection pooling, and zero-downtime migrations on live systems.
Transactional Systems: Experience with payments or other correctness-critical systems, reasoning clearly about concurrent updates, duplicate requests, partial failures, reconciliation, and auditability.
Distributed Systems & Integrations: Experience designing distributed workflows, CDC and event streaming (Debezium, Kafka/Redpanda), and third-party integrations, with a clear understanding of consistency trade-offs and failure recovery.
Cloud & Kubernetes: Experience operating production applications on a major cloud platform and Kubernetes, supported by working knowledge of Terraform and cost-conscious infrastructure design.
Production Ownership: Proven ownership of complex production incidents and the engineering improvements needed to strengthen reliability and release confidence.
Application Security: Ability to apply security principles throughout application design and delivery, particularly when handling sensitive data.
AI-Assisted Development: Practical experience using AI tools in engineering workflows while independently validating the quality and correctness of their outputs.
Leadership & Communication: Ability to guide engineers and explain technical decisions clearly to engineering and business stakeholders, with English proficiency equivalent to C1 or above.
Nice to Have
Payments & Ledger: Experience building payment infrastructure or financial ledgers where reconciliation and balance integrity are central to the design.
Multi-Region & Data Residency: Experience delivering regional architectures that meet geographic data restrictions while supporting reliable global operations.
Azure & AKS: Hands-on experience operating and improving production platforms within the Azure ecosystem.
Observability: Experience establishing observability practices (Datadog, Grafana, Azure Monitor, OpenTelemetry, or similar) that help teams understand system behaviour and resolve production issues effectively.
Security & Compliance: Experience translating payment security and data-protection requirements (PCI DSS) into practical engineering controls.
AI Services: Experience integrating AI capabilities into production systems with appropriate evaluation and data-protection controls.
What We Value
Strong Ownership: Deep accountability for overall software quality, reliability, and release confidence.
Pragmatic Risk-Based Thinking: Calm, structured decision-making under delivery pressure.
Clear Communication: Ability to collaborate seamlessly with cross-functional engineering, product, and business stakeholders.
Practical Mindset: A focus on continuous process improvement without over-engineering solutions.
Attention to Detail: High standards for test accuracy, coverage, and system edge cases.
Why join Hello Clever?
High-Growth Fintech - Be part of a company leading the future of real-time payments and loyalty solutions.
Global impact - We're live in 26+ markets and growing fast.
Category-defining product - Real-time payments, instant cashback, AI-powered merchant tools.
Mission-driven - We're here to make money smarter, fairer and faster for everyone.
Dynamic Culture - Join a passionate, results-driven team that values innovation and collaboration.
Benefits & Perks
Leave that supports real life - Enjoy Birthday Leave and Menstrual Leave in addition to your standard annual leave.
Invest in your wellbeing and growth - Receive an annual Wellness and Development Allowance to use toward what helps you feel and perform at your best.
Technology support - Access a Technology Allowance to help you create a productive working setup.
Flexible hybrid working - Enjoy the balance of collaborating in person and working remotely.
Celebrate together - Connect with the team through quarterly social events and our annual company trip.
How To Apply
We like to keep things simple, but we also want to make sure this is the right fit for both of us. Here's what to expect:
Phone Screen: A quick chat to learn more about you, your experience, and why you're keen to join.
Virtual Technical Chat: A technical video call to dive into your experience and technical capabilities.
Assessment Task: A take-home practical exercise to showcase your automation framework skills.
Meet the Team: A final interview to meet the team, assess cultural fit, and discuss how you'd make the role your own.
Sound like you? Let's talk. Drop us a note at [protected info]
Direct applicants only, no agencies.