Asset & Wealth Management - Money Movement & Payment Rails, Software Engineering - Vice President - Richardson

About the role

The VP of Money Movement Engineering will lead the strategic technical direction for our global payment infrastructure. This leader is responsible for the end-to-end lifecycle of money movement, from the implementation of domestic real-time rails (RTP, FedNow, Zelle) and legacy systems (ACH) to the integration of international standards like SEPA.

Responsibilities

Key responsibilities include:

• Payment Rail Implementation & Integration: Lead the engineering and deployment of U.S. payment rails, including ACH, The Clearing House (TCH) RTP, FedNow, and Zelle.
• European Standards: Oversee the integration and maintenance of SEPA (SCT, SCT Inst, and SDD) to ensure seamless Euro-denominated transactions across the Single Euro Payments Area.
• ISO 20022 Migration: Drive the adoption of ISO 20022 messaging standards across all payment flows to ensure data richness, interoperability, and future-proofing of the payment stack.
• Scalability & Performance Engineering: Design and manage distributed, event-driven systems capable of processing high-volume consumer transactions at scale with sub-second latency.
• SLA Management: Define, monitor, and guarantee strict Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for payment availability, processing times, and settlement finality.
• Resiliency & Recovery: Implement robust disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity plans (BCP) specifically for money movement, ensuring zero data loss and high availability (99.99% or higher).
• Governance, Standards & Compliance: Ensure all integrations adhere to NACHA rules, Federal Reserve regulations, and European Payments Council (EPC) guidelines.
• Security & Risk: Partner with Information Security and Fraud teams to integrate real-time risk scoring and AML/KYC checks into the payment orchestration layer.
• Reconciliation & Ledgering: Oversee the engineering of automated, real-time reconciliation systems to ensure the integrity of the general ledger and customer accounts.
• Strategic Leadership & Vendor Management: Define the 3-year vision for the "New Payment Rails" (NPR) team, balancing the modernization of legacy systems with the adoption of emerging instant payment technologies.
• Stakeholder Management: Act as the primary technical liaison for external partners, including central banks, clearing houses (TCH, EBA Clearing), and payment service providers (PSPs).
• Team Mentorship: Build and lead a high-performing team of payment engineers, architects, and SREs specializing in financial transaction systems.

Qualifications

Required qualifications and skills include:

• Technical Expertise: 12+ years of experience in software engineering, with at least 6 years in a senior leadership role specifically within Payments or Fintech.
• Rail Mastery: Deep, hands-on experience with the technical specifications of ACH, RTP, FedNow, Zelle, and SEPA.
• Messaging Standards: Expert knowledge of ISO 20022, SWIFT MT/MX, and JSON-based API payment protocols.
• Cloud-Native Infrastructure: Proven experience building high-scale systems on AWS, GCP, or Azure using microservices, Kafka, and distributed databases (e.g., Cassandra, CockroachDB).
• Strategic Leadership: Proven track record of managing mission-critical systems with strict uptime and performance requirements.
• Regulatory Knowledge: Strong understanding of PSD2, Dodd-Frank, and global money transmitter licensing requirements.
• Analytical Rigor: Ability to translate complex payment network rules into technical requirements and control frameworks.

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field.