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Papaya Global, a B2B SaaS unicorn in the payroll and payments space, is seeking a Software Architect to join its central Architects Team. This is a hands-on, cross-functional role where you'll partner with R&D, Product, Security, and DevOps teams across multiple domains—payments, payroll, workforce management, platform, data, and security—to shape scalable, secure systems and maintain coherent technical direction across the organization.
You will lead architectural design across Papaya's infrastructure and product domains, ensuring solutions meet business, scalability, performance, and compliance requirements. You'll act as a trusted technical partner, translating business and product requirements into clear architectural direction. Key responsibilities include defining and maintaining high-level architecture with focus on integration and long-term evolvability; building hands-on proofs of concept to de-risk decisions and validate new technologies; leading technical due diligence on third-party vendors and integrations; driving secure-by-design practices; evaluating and introducing emerging technologies including AI/LLM capabilities; championing adoption of AI-powered engineering tools across R&D; defining architectural guidelines and best practices; and providing technical mentorship and design reviews to development teams.
Required qualifications: 8+ years as a System/Software Architect designing robust, scalable systems; 12+ years hands-on software development with strong proficiency in Java or equivalent backend language; proven experience building enterprise SaaS platforms and highly scaled production systems; Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field. Technical depth required in cloud-native architecture (AWS preferred), microservices, event-driven architectures (Kafka, RabbitMQ, SQS), containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), software design patterns, SDLC, DDD/TDD/EDD, SOLID principles, security fundamentals, SQL/NoSQL databases, REST/GraphQL APIs, Git/CI-CD/Agile practices. Deep, hands-on experience with agentic AI coding tools (Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot Agent Mode, or Codex CLI) used regularly on real work is required. Practical fluency with LLM chat assistants, AI-assisted code review, documentation generation, and ability to design effective context for AI agents. Familiarity with Model Context Protocol (MCP) and connecting AI agents to internal tools and services. Awareness of security, privacy, IP, and quality risks of AI-assisted development. Experience integrating AI/LLM capabilities into backend products is a strong plus. FinTech or regulated industry experience is advantageous. You must demonstrate ability to drive end-to-end delivery of complex features, strong analytical and self-learning skills, excellent communication and influencing abilities, and fluent English.
