Principal Engineer / Architect – Fraud Prevention Technology
Principal Engineer / Architect – Fraud Prevention Technology
Location: Malvern, PA
Employment Type: Long-Term Contract
Pay: $60/hr on W2
Experience: 12+ Years
Visa: USC, GC, GC EAD, H4 EAD
Position Overview
We are seeking a highly experienced Principal Engineer / Architect to define and deliver the next generation of fraud prevention technology for a large financial services organization.
This is a senior-manager-equivalent individual contributor position with no direct reports. The ideal candidate will bring a strong background in banking, payments, financial services, fraud prevention, or related technology, along with proven experience defining technical strategy and architecting large-scale distributed systems.
The role will have significant visibility and influence as the organization expands into new financial products, including debit card and payment offerings. You will help establish the future-state fraud prevention platform while continuing to strengthen existing fraud capabilities.
Key Responsibilities
Define the technical vision, architecture, and multi-year roadmap for fraud prevention platforms.
Architect and deliver real-time detection, decisioning, and response systems at enterprise scale.
Design solutions to address emerging fraud vectors associated with payments and debit card products.
Translate fraud strategy and business requirements into scalable technology architecture.
Partner with product, risk, compliance, engineering, and data science teams.
Drive adoption of AI/ML and intelligent automation within fraud prevention and engineering workflows.
Provide technical leadership for new product launches and emerging fraud risks.
Remain hands-on with system design, architecture, technical reviews, and production engineering when needed.
Establish engineering standards and best practices across fraud technology.
Mentor and influence engineering teams without direct management responsibility.
Evaluate emerging technologies and determine their applicability to fraud prevention.
Help develop and execute a long-term technology strategy supporting business growth.
Required Qualifications
12+ years of software engineering / technology experience.
5+ years of experience in fraud prevention, payments, banking, financial services, or closely related technology.
Strong understanding of payment networks, transaction processing, authorization systems, transaction monitoring, or identity verification.
Proven experience architecting distributed, scalable, low-latency systems.
Experience working within a regulated financial services environment.
Strong understanding of AI/ML applications, model integration, intelligent automation, or LLM-augmented engineering practices.
Demonstrated experience operating at Principal Engineer, Staff Engineer, Architect, or equivalent technical leadership level.
Ability to define technical strategy while remaining comfortable working with engineering teams and technology.
Strong communication and stakeholder-management skills.
Experience collaborating with product, risk, compliance, and data science organizations.
Knowledge of applicable financial industry standards and regulations, including PCI-DSS, BSA/AML, Reg E, and payment network rules.
Preferred Qualifications
Experience with a large bank, asset manager, fintech, payments company, or other financial institution.
Experience supporting or launching debit card, payments, or financial product platforms.
Experience with real-time streaming technologies such as Kafka and Flink.
Experience with fraud decisioning engines and real-time risk scoring.
Background in fraud ring detection, adversarial modeling, or advanced fraud analytics.
Experience with AWS and modern cloud-based architectures.
Experience with JavaScript or other mainstream programming languages.
Strong understanding of machine learning and AI-driven fraud prevention.
Ideal Candidate
The ideal candidate is a senior technology professional who combines deep financial-services domain knowledge with strong architecture and technical-strategy experience.
Direct fraud-prevention experience is highly valuable, but candidates with extensive banking, payments, or financial-services technology experience who have successfully driven large-scale technology strategy will also be considered.
This position is best suited for someone who can operate as a hands-on technical authority, influence senior stakeholders, and help shape the future architecture of an enterprise fraud prevention platform.
This is an individual contributor role with no direct reports.