Director, Professional Services Solution Architect

Visa is a world leader in payments and technology, with over 259 billion payments transactions flowing safely between consumers, merchants, financial institutions, and government entities in more than 200 countries and territories each year. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable, and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses, and economies to thrive while driven by a common purpose – to uplift everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.

Make an impact with a purpose-driven industry leader. Join us today and experience Life at Visa.

Visa’s Acceptance Solutions Professional Services (ASPS) solves problems and accelerates innovation and growth for merchants, acquirers, partners, and payment technology providers by providing a range of services including consulting, technology, and business transformation, developing target state architectures, customer journey mapping, solution development, product acceleration, development, testing, migration, implementation, and value realization. 

We are looking for a passionate, dynamic and customer focused Client Solution Architect to join Visa’s Acceptance Solutions Professional Services team. The Director, Solution Architect role will report into the Sr. Director within the Acceptance Solutions Professional Services team.

The ideal candidate is a motivated self-starter who can work independently in a fast paced, ambiguous environment with limited supervision, a fast learner, a highly effective communicator with strong ability to influence the solution architecture with internal stakeholders and external clients and be able to provide direction when needed to junior architects, consultants, and analysts in the project team.  

Essential Functions

• Conduct workshops, identify client needs, elicit insights and drivers behind the needs, design solutions that meet the client needs considering all vectors that might impact the solution including but not limited to Visa’s Acceptance Platform strategy and direction, client ecosystem, desired time-to-market, and global market applicability.

• Understand current state architecture, define future state vision, and target state architectures, define solutions, and build roadmap of prioritized features to meet client requirements both on and off the Visa Acceptance Platform

• Understands our clients’ needs and business outcomes and can act as the technical champion within Visa to advocate for their clients, while mindful and respectful of competing product development priorities and backlogs, to effectively manage client expectations and delivery timeline while ensuring the feasibility of solutions by mapping components to actual existing capabilities and assets.

• Provides thought leadership on all payments and commerce-related matters to develop a vision for specific areas of solution with an eye toward applicability across the greater client base.

• Initiates solution ideation and execution to drive the creation of new solutions with CyberSource solution owners and product managers, as well as 3rd-party technology providers. Turns ideas into proof of concepts, prototypes, and technical artifacts to highlight our innovations, or to solicit client feedback on new product features or functionality.

• Produce Solution Documents and other artifacts that detail functional and non-functional requirements, solution design including flows, business architecture diagrams, user experience, impacted components, relative prioritization of desired feature sets, acceptance criteria etc., encompassing all relevant parts of the ecosystem of merchants, partners, and 3rd party technology providers.

• Partners with Product Development Systems Architects to ensure all client solutions align with long-term platform architecture strategy.

• Collaborates with the Client-facing teams and coordinates with Visa Acceptance Solutions Professional Services Engagement Managers and Solution Engineers Managers to own all technical payment related client deliverables, from inception to release. Manages client evolution for new launches including further solution design, training and operational processes for solution launches where appropriate.

• Engages Product Managers, Sales Engineers, Developers, Product Support, Partners, and External vendors on solution scoping and business case creation for all net new development.

• Drives coordination with core product teams to prioritize product changes and feature enhancements, identifying critical paths and risks.

• Supports a sustained level of involvement in the internal and external testing of all products, solution, and feature releases, to ensure that all requirements and flows meet defined requirements and quality standards.

• Maintains high level of expertise across Visa Acceptance Solutions’ products and solutions with a detailed understanding and appreciation for overall strategic context, priorities, and revenue goals.

• Stays abreast of evolving payment technologies, innovations, and strategic partners that may accelerate speed-to-market or enhance our existing products and solutions.

Key Leadership Competencies:

•          Builds and leverages partnerships across the Visa organization

•          Execute against commitments

•          Acts like an owner, values accountability

This is a hybrid position. Hybrid employees can alternate time between both remote and office. Employees in hybrid roles are expected to work from the office 2-3 set days a week (determined by leadership/site), with a general guidepost of being in the office 50% or more of the time based on business needs.

Basic Qualifications
• 10 or more years of work experience with a Bachelor’s Degree or at least 8 years of work experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters/ MBA/JD/MD) or at least 3 years of work experience with a PhD

Preferred Qualifications
• 12 or more years of work experience with a Bachelor’s Degree or 8-10 years of experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, MD) or 6+ years of work experience with a PhD
• Payments and Financial Services and Technologies consulting background and experience.
Extensive experience in defining and designing business and technical solution architecture
Experience in designing solutions in payment services industry.
Experience implementing and enabling technology solutions with merchants, acquirers and payment technology providers
Experience of working and in-depth understanding of e2e payment processing solutions across the payment life cycle is preferred
Excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to analyze complex systems to identify opportunities for improvement.
Tech skills

Experience in API definition and design
Proficient in diagramming and visual collaboration tools such as Visio, Mural etc
Experience in using UI frameworks
Domain:
• Advanced understanding of banking, payment card systems, payment methods and merchant acquiring and processing globally
• Detailed and demonstrated experience in eCommerce, mobile and point-of-sale technologies
• Highly preferred to have an understanding of Fraud Management, PCI, Product Management, and Marketing Principles
• Current knowledge of emerging payment trends, players, and competitive landscape
Business:
• Negotiation skills with a track record of achieving results
• Strong analytical, quantitative, commercial, project management and interpersonal skills
• High energy level, performance oriented and passionate about merchants, acquirers, and technology in the digital commerce space
• An ability to appropriately recommend and influence phasing and prioritization of underlying capabilities and activities.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills and an ability to simplify and communicate complex technical issues to non-technical executives, sales teams, and other stakeholders.
• Experience and comfort in engaging with internal and client executive teams.
• Ability to inspire and lead high performing cross-functional teams who can envision and create innovative solutions that meet the needs of our global clients, leading large teams where there is not a direct reporting line and able to manage ambiguous situations.
• Intellectual curiosity and interest in digging into the detail, understanding data, making recommendations based on that data, and using it to solve problems.

Work Hours: Varies upon the needs of the department.

Travel Requirements: This position requires travel 5-10% of the time.

Mental/Physical Requirements: This position will be performed in an office setting.  The position will require the incumbent to sit and stand at a desk, communicate in person and by telephone, frequently operate standard office equipment, such as telephones and computers.

Visa is an EEO Employer.  Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status.  Visa will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.

Visa will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with applicable local law, including the requirements of Article 49 of the San Francisco Police Code.

U.S. APPLICANTS ONLY: The estimated salary range for a new hire into this position is 160,600.00 to 232,900.00 USD per year, which may include potential sales incentive payments (if applicable). Salary may vary depending on job-related factors which may include knowledge, skills, experience, and location. In addition, this position may be eligible for bonus and equity. Visa has a comprehensive benefits package for which this position may be eligible that includes Medical, Dental, Vision, 401 (k), FSA/HSA, Life Insurance, Paid Time Off, and Wellness Program.