Vietnam Lead Solution Architect

Role Summary

We are seeking an experienced and highly strategic technology leader to serve as Technical Consultant for one of GFT's most critical client programs. This role will act as the senior-most technical authority across the engagement, responsible for end-to-end architecture, technical delivery governance, engineering leadership, and executive-level stakeholder management.

This position requires strong hands-on engineering credibility combined with deep architecture leadership, ensuring complex technology ecosystems, delivery teams, and client expectations align into a coherent and scalable delivery.

The Lead Solution Architect will operate as the primary technical advisor to client senior leadership, guiding decision-making across architecture, integration strategy, cloud adoption, security, performance, and regulatory compliance.

Key Responsibilities

1. Technology Strategy & Architecture Ownership

• Own and define the end-to-end technology strategy and solution architecture for the program.
• Translate business capabilities into scalable technical architecture across applications, data, integrations, and infrastructure.
• Govern architecture consistency across multiple domains, squads, and solution streams.
• Validate technical decisions, trade-offs, and implementation approaches to ensure long-term sustainability.
• Ensure architecture aligns with enterprise standards, regulatory expectations, and client technology roadmaps.

2. Engineering Leadership & Delivery Governance

• Provide leadership and direction to architecture, engineering, and delivery teams across the full software lifecycle.
• Act as the final technical escalation point for critical delivery issues, scope changes, risks, and dependencies.
• Ensure delivery quality through strong technical governance, design reviews, and architecture compliance.
• Own the technical RAID process (Risks, Assumptions, Issues, Dependencies) and mitigation planning.
• Ensure all non-functional requirements are addressed (security, performance, scalability, reliability, observability, availability).

3. Client & Executive Stakeholder Management

• Serve as the primary technical counterpart to client senior stakeholders, including enterprise architects and technology leadership.
• Lead technical workshops, architecture reviews, design sessions, and executive alignment discussions.
• Present complex technical concepts clearly to both technical teams and senior non-technical leadership.
• Build credibility and trust with stakeholders at all levels, from engineers to executives.

4. Solution Consulting & Requirement Translation

• Validate and map business requirements into clear technical solution concepts and designs.
• Provide consultative guidance on technology choices and implementation approaches
• Review business processes and align them with technical design, ensuring end-to-end feasibility.
• Produce and maintain high-quality technical documentation and solution design artifacts.

5. Program-Level Coordination & Cross-Team Alignment

• Act as a bridge across product owners, engineering managers, solution architects, platform teams, security teams, and vendors.
• Ensure alignment between multiple delivery streams such as core banking, cards, payments, digital channels, integration, and data.
• Coordinate architecture and delivery consistency across distributed and offshore teams.
• Drive collaboration between internal and client teams to remove blockers and accelerate execution.

6. Modern Engineering & Innovation Leadership

• Champion modern engineering practices including microservices and distributed architecture, event-driven systems (Kafka), cloud-native development, CI/CD, DevOps, and automation-first engineering.
• Promote security-by-design and compliance-by-design principles across delivery.
• Promote AI-assisted engineering practices across the SDLC (code generation, test automation, refactoring, documentation), while ensuring correctness, governance, and security.

Qualifications & Experience

Leadership & Consulting

• 10+ years of experience in senior technology leadership roles (CTO, Technical Director, Principal Architect, Solution Architect, Technical Consultant).
• Strong experience leading large-scale programs involving multiple engineering squads and complex stakeholder environments.
• Proven track record in consultative client-facing leadership, including executive communication and decision facilitation.

Technical Expertise

• Strong hands-on background in Java, Spring Boot, and API-driven architecture.
• Strong experience with microservices and distributed systems.
• Experience with event-driven architecture (Kafka).
• Strong understanding of enterprise integration patterns.
• Experience with cloud platforms, containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), and CI/CD pipelines.
• Strong understanding of architecture governance, scalability design, performance engineering, and resiliency.

Domain Knowledge

• Strong exposure to banking or FinTech domains such as core banking modernization, payments, cards, risk and compliance, and digital channels.
• Familiarity with regulatory, security, and compliance expectations in financial services.

Communication & Stakeholder Influence

• Strong ability to influence and guide senior leadership decision-making through clear technical narratives.
• Strong presentation and documentation skills.
• Ability to lead global delivery teams, including offshore and remote engineering organizations.
• Experience in dealing global clients.

What we offer you

You will be working with some of the brightest people in business and technology on challenging and rewarding projects in a team of like-minded individuals. GFT prides itself on its international environment that promotes professional and cultural exchange and encourages further individual development with the benefits below:

• Competitive salary
• 13th-month salary guarantee
• Performance bonus
• Professional English course for employees
• Premium health insurance
• Extensive annual leave

(Due to the high volume of applications we receive, we are unable to respond to every candidate individually. If you have not received a response from GFT regarding your application within 10 workdays, please consider that we have decided to proceed with other candidates. We truly appreciate your interest in GFT and thank you for your understanding.)