Solutions Architect, Payment Operations

About the role: As a SAFe Solution Architect aligned to the Payments Operations value stream, you will define and drive the architectural vision and technical strategy across all payment, billing, collections, reconciliation, and financial operations platforms. This role is critical to ensuring that customer and donor funds move securely, accurately, compliantly, and at scale from authorization through settlement and reporting. You will partner closely with Finance, Payments Operations, Risk & Compliance, Product Management, Cyber Security, and Engineering to design resilient, highly available, and audit-ready solutions that support global payment methods, regulatory requirements, and high transaction volumes. What you'll be doing: Define and evolve the solution architecture for the Payments Operations value stream, ensuring alignment with enterprise architecture and business strategy. Establish and maintain a long-term architectural roadmap supporting end-to-end payment lifecycles including authorization, settlement, reconciliation, refunds, chargebacks, and reporting. Drive modernization using cloud-native, API-first, and event-driven architectures to improve scalability, resiliency, and observability. Partner with Finance, Risk, Compliance, Product, and Engineering teams to translate business and regulatory requirements into secure, scalable technical solutions. Lead architectural design across payment gateways, billing and invoicing platforms, ERP and general ledger integrations, and financial data pipelines. Ensure architectural alignment and dependency management across multiple Agile Release Trains (ARTs). Design highly available and fault-tolerant systems supporting mission-critical financial workflows with strict SLAs. Guide teams in implementing auditable, idempotent transaction flows and real-time event processing. Identify and mitigate technical and operational risks related to PCI DSS, SOX, fraud, data privacy, and financial compliance. Participate in PI Planning, System Demos, and Inspect & Adapt events to ensure architectural alignment and continuous improvement. Collaborate with Enterprise, Cyber, and Solution Architects to ensure interoperability across adjacent value streams. What we'll want you to have: 12+ years of industry experience designing and implementing solutions. 8+ years of experience in solution or enterprise architecture roles. 3+ years of experience working in a SAFe environment or other scaled Agile frameworks. SAFe® Architect Certification (or willingness to obtain). Deep expertise in payments, billing, reconciliation, and financial operations architectures. Experience with Integration & Event Hubs, Event Streaming & Pub/Sub, and AI orchestration Strong understanding of PCI DSS, SOX controls, auditability, and financial compliance requirements. Demonstrated ability to deliver solutions meeting quality, security, availability, and operability standards. Preferred Skills Experience with payment gateways and processors (e.g., Stripe, Cybersource, Adyen, Braintree, Hyperwallet, Worldpay, PayPal). Experience integrating billing, subscription management, and revenue recognition platforms. Experience with enterprise data platforms, including data warehouses, master data management, and analytical/reporting tools (e.g., Qlik, Tableau, Power BI). ERP and financial system integration experience (e.g., NetSuite, Workday, SAP, Oracle). Strong background in event-driven architectures, distributed systems, and financial data pipelines. Familiarity with fraud detection, chargeback workflows, and risk scoring platforms. Experience with cloud platforms, microservices, and API gateway architectures. Strong communication skills and the ability to mentor architects and senior engineers. Stay up to date on everything Blackbaud, follow us on Linkedin, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube Blackbaud powers social impact through purpose‑driven technology and responsible AI. Guided by our Intelligence for Good® vision, we're building a culture where innovation, trust, and human expertise come together to help organizations make a greater difference in the world. The starting base pay is $133,700.00 to $173,800.00. Blackbaud may pay more or less based on employee qualifications, market value, Company finances, and other operational considerations. Benefits Include: Medical, dental, and vision insurance Remote-flexible workforce Wellness Programs 401(k) program with employer match Flexible paid time off Generous Parental Leave Donations for Doers Pet insurance, legal and identity protection Tuition reimbursement program Blackbaud (NASDAQ: BLKB) is the world's leading cloud software company powering social good. Serving the entire social good community—nonprofits, foundations, corporations, education institutions, healthcare institutions and individual change agents—Blackbaud connects and empowers organizations to increase their impact through software, services, expertise, and data intelligence. The Blackbaud portfolio is tailored to the unique needs of vertical markets, with solutions for fundraising and CRM, marketing, advocacy, peer-to-peer fundraising, corporate social responsibility, school management, ticketing, grantmaking, financial management, payment processing, and analytics. Serving the industry for more than three decades, Blackbaud is headquartered in Charleston, South Carolina and has operations in the United States, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom.