Payments Senior Technology Architect

We are looking for a Senior Architect to join our multi-disciplinary architecture team in the Payments portfolio, supporting Payments CIO strategic programmes and value stream initiatives to shape and assure the technical direction for Nationwide’s Payments systems. We’re looking for someone who brings thought leadership, strategic vision combined with practical delivery judgement and the confidence to influence senior business and technology stakeholders through clear architecture narratives, data-led insights and well-structured recommendations. The successful candidate will balance innovation and fast-paced delivery with strong governance, helping us exploit emerging technology safely and pragmatically.

This role is part of the leadership team within the Payments Architecture team in Customer Technology Delivery (COO), aligned to the Payments CIO. The team is responsible for defining the Payments technical roadmap based on business strategy, shaping solution options and design, and ensuring CIO deliveries align to the agreed strategies, roadmaps, enterprise guardrails and relevant industry standards.

Payments within Nationwide is entering a period of significant change as we complete our simplification and modernisation roadmap within the existing estate to drive resilience and security, exploit new technology like artificial intelligence to improve customer experience and efficiency, prepare for further change including the technical integration between Nationwide and Virgin Money, while responding to industry and regulatory demands as they emerge. This creates a strong pipeline of meaningful work, with opportunities to transform how Nationwide serves its 24 million customers.

We have an ambitious strategy to transform and simplify our Payments estate to support our members for the future, with our core focus being:

• Electronic Payments : completing our Faster Payments and BACS modernisation journeys; commencing High Value and International Payments Modernisation; and supporting Business customers through the introduction of Direct Debit collections.
• Cards : upgrading infrastructure and legacy applications to deliver enhanced resilience, capacity and capability across card payments.
• Integration : designing solutions that ensure continuity of payments as we are integrating the Virgin Money and Nationwide estates.

This is an excellent opportunity to join the Payments Architecture team at a time of meaningful change, helping to shape practical, resilient and future-ready solutions. The successful candidate will bring a broad base of senior architecture experience, together with hands-on understanding of payment schemes, standards, processes and technologies.

At Nationwide we offer hybrid working wherever possible. More rewarding relationships are supported through our hybrid approach, bringing colleagues together across our UK wide estate, whilst also supporting generous access to home working. We value our time in the office to solve problems, to learn, and to feel connected.

For this job you'll spend at least two days per week, or if part time you'll spend 40% of your working time, based at either our Swindon Or London office. If your application is successful, your hiring manager will provide further details on how this works. You can also find out more about our approach to hybrid working here.

If we receive a high volume of relevant applications, we may close the advert earlier than the advertised date, so please apply as soon as you can.

Responsibilities

What you’ll be doing

You’ll be a key part of the Payments Architecture team, supporting the Payments CIO’s change portfolio by working alongside Payments value streams, product and delivery colleagues, engineers, vendors, partners and architects from across Nationwide.

You’ll provide thought leadership for Payments, helping the portfolio make confident technology choices that balance innovation, member and colleague outcomes, resilience, cost, risk and governance. This means being curious about new technology, while being disciplined about where experimentation should become enterprise-grade delivery.

You’ll shape, lead and track the plan for architectural deliverables within the value streams, and where appropriate the wider team’s work, to define target states and transition states for applications across Payments. This includes agreeing the plan upfront, managing key milestones, raising and resolving architecturally significant questions, and proactively engaging senior stakeholders so progress is visible and expectations are managed effectively.

You’ll create high-quality architecture artefacts and outputs that influence senior business and technology stakeholders to enable timely, well-informed decisions that lead to strategic and tangible technology outcomes.

The role is accountable for the end-to-end completeness and integrity of their owning solutions, making sure designs are secure, resilient, supportable and aligned to relevant governance, patterns, standards and guardrails. You’ll collaborate with Domain Architects and enterprise architecture teams to ensure solutions are aligned across portfolios, transition states are coherent, and the organisation can move safely towards agreed target states.

You’ll lead and coach Solution Architects and engineers across the portfolio to produce high-quality design artefacts and deliver within governance. You’ll provide clear direction, practical assurance and constructive coaching so quality improves, rework is minimised and escalations are managed effectively.

You’ll actively support architecture practice improvements, contributing tangible actions that improve productivity, consistency, communication and quality of output across the team.

About you

We’re looking for an established senior architect who can demonstrate applied experience in:

• Applying architecture thinking to real payments change, balancing strategy, delivery, innovation, resilience, regulation, governance, colleague and member outcomes.
• Providing thought leadership on complex architectural topics, creating clarity where there are competing priorities, incomplete information or differing stakeholder views.
• Defining target states, transition states and roadmaps for complex payments applications and value streams.
• Using data, insight and structured storytelling to influence senior stakeholders, secure buy-in and enable timely architecture and technology decisions.
• Designing and delivering payments solutions in a UK financial services organisation or similarly regulated environment.
• Producing high-quality architecture artefacts, including logical architecture, integration views, data flows, non-functional requirements, options analysis, decision papers, governance submissions and senior stakeholder papers.
• Providing insight on future technologies, including agentic AI, and how they could unlock business value at pace while operating within enterprise guardrails and risk appetite.
• Adopting organisational design standards and patterns for significant architectural changes, such as multi or hybrid-cloud hosting, event-driven architecture, integration guardrails and AI adoption at scale.
• Leading, coaching and assuring Solution Architects and Engineers, to develop a strong and collaborative technical team in Payments.
• Applying practical knowledge of payment schemes, standards and end-to-end processing across some or all of Faster Payments, BACS, CHAPS, international payments, debit and credit cards, ATMs and Open Banking.
• Working with payments technologies and platforms, including payment gateways, payment engines, APIs, message flows, third-party services, SaaS/PaaS capabilities, bespoke software and commercial off-the-shelf packages
• Applying payments standards and industry change, such as ISO 20022, scheme rule changes, message standards, settlement, reconciliation, exception handling and operational resilience considerations.

Our customer first behaviours put customers and members at the heart of how we work together. They are the set of behaviours that every colleague needs to display, in every role:

• Feel what customers feel - We step into our customers’ shoes, using their feedback and insights to empathise with them and to understand their needs, so that every decision we make starts and finishes with our customers in mind

• Say it straight - We are brave in speaking out and saying what we think – we’re honest and direct with good intent, openly sharing diverse perspectives to reach the best conclusions and using language everyone can understand

• Push for better - We don’t settle for mediocrity, we challenge the status quo, taking responsibility for continuous improvement and personal development

• Get it done - We prioritise what will have the greatest impact, we are decisive, and we take accountability for delivering brilliant customer outcomes

You can strengthen your application by showing how our customer first behaviours resonate with you, and where you may have already demonstrated these.

Qualifications

The extras you’ll get

There are all sorts of employee benefits available at Nationwide, including:

• 30 days holiday, pro rata

• Private medical insurance

• A highly competitive pension to help you build a strong foundation for retirement

• Access to an annual performance-related bonus

• Training and development to help you progress your career

• A great selection of additional benefits through our salary sacrifice scheme

• Life assurance to provide peace of mind for you and your loved ones in the event of your death

• Wellhub – access to a range of free and paid options for health and wellness

• Up to 2 days of paid volunteering a year

Banking – but fairer, more rewarding, and for the good of society

We forge our own path at Nationwide.

As a mutual, we’re owned by our members - those customers who bank, save or have a mortgage with us. We challenge the financial sector status quo. We don’t see customers as the engine of our own profit. We share our profits with them and put their needs first. Always there when they need us. Supporting them and their lives.

If you’re inspired by fairer finances, passionate about making a meaningful impact, and truly care about our customers, you’re one of us.

At Nationwide, you are challenged to grow and rewarded for doing so. Valued. Recognised. Inspired to be your best. As a community, we want our working lives to count. As a team, we celebrate what we achieve. As a standard-setter, we work for the good of customers, communities, and broader society.

We are purpose-driven. Uncompromisingly customer. Unstoppably Nationwide.

What to do next

If this role is for you, please click the ‘Apply Now’ button. You’ll need to attach your up-to-date CV and answer a few quick questions for us.

We respond to everyone, so we will be in contact shortly after the closing date to let you know the outcome of your application.

Keeping your data and personal information confidential is important to us. To find out more about how we use and process your data, please read our Privacy policy .

If you want to find out more about using AI in our recruitment process, please read more here .

Disability Confident

We’re not just guided by data, we’re driven by the real experiences of our people. We’re a Disability Confident Level 3 Leader, the highest level.

That’s why we’re constantly evolving our policies and practices to make sure everyone feels genuinely supported, valued, and empowered to champion inclusion. Whatever your needs, we’re here to support you. If you need any additional support throughout your application journey, email our team at Recruitment Support .

Apply safely with Nationwide

Recruitment scams can look convincing, so take a moment to check the role is listed on our official careers site and read our guidance on Don’t be conned by a job scam.

Please note that should you be successful in securing this role, the job title on our internal systems will be Senior Technology Architect