The Principal Architect - Money and Payments R&D will support the Federal Reserve System's Research and Development around the future of money and payments. The role requires an in-person schedule and candidates must reside in a commutable distance from the Boston, San Francisco, or Dallas Fed Bank location.
Requirements
- Architect high-throughput distributed payment systems with strong consistency guarantees
- Design and implement EVM virtual machine infrastructure with parallel execution capabilities
- Write production-grade Solidity implementing settlement, orchestration, and atomic cross-service composition
- Optimize transaction processing for extreme load through parallelization and intelligent partitioning
- Build cryptographic protocols including zero-knowledge proofs for privacy-preserving validation
- Establish code quality standards and lead reviews across smart contracts, infrastructure, cryptography, and DevOps
- Architect cloud-native platforms with multi-region resilience and horizontal scalability
- Design unified data platforms enabling cross-system analytics and eliminating data silos
- Build Kubernetes-based orchestration with custom operators for distributed applications
- Implement GitOps workflows and Infrastructure as Code
- Create CI/CD pipelines with comprehensive testing, security scanning, and zero-downtime deployments
- Establish observability strategies with distributed tracing, metrics, and real-time alerting
- Translate payment system challenges into AI-native and agentic capabilities
- Design and implement agentic AI systems for autonomous payment orchestration, fraud detection, and real-time decision-making
- Architect AI-enabled payment rails that leverage machine learning for intelligent routing, liquidity optimization, and risk management
- Build agentic commerce capabilities enabling autonomous financial transactions and smart contract execution
- Develop AI systems that enhance payment system resilience through predictive analytics and anomaly detection
- Design multi-agent systems for coordinating complex payment workflows across institutional boundaries
- Drive adoption of AI-assisted programming tools to accelerate development velocity system-wide
- Build AI agents and custom tooling automating code review, testing, documentation, and security scanning
- Establish governance and best practices for responsible AI usage in production systems
- Lead the shift toward AI-enabled software development operations, reducing manual burden and improving code quality
- Create frameworks for AI-assisted development that scale across distributed engineering teams
- Connect AI capabilities to strategic payment system value, ensuring AI delivers measurable business outcomes
- Translate complex technical concepts into business value for executive stakeholders and policymakers
- Synthesize stakeholder pain points into validated AI-native technical solutions
- Mentor engineers across application development, platform engineering, DevOps, and AI implementation
- Lead proof-of-concept development demonstrating feasibility of emerging payment and AI technologies
- Drive cross-functional coordination across business lines, IT, security, and compliance to enable integrated AI delivery
Benefits
- Generous Paid Time Off
- 401k Matching
- Retirement Plan
- Visa Sponsorship
- Generous Parental Leave
- Tuition Reimbursement
- Relocation Assistance
