Careers

This role is at the centre of Istimar – the person who takes a client's vision and designs it into a real, investable, well-run fintech.

It is a challenging and exciting role, and a rare one in its breadth. Finance and technology are both moving fast, and AI is reshaping not only how fintechs are built but the business models themselves. This role sits at that intersection: architecting impactful fintech solutions and leading their delivery – often several at once, in a fast-moving, high-stakes environment where real money and real businesses are on the line.

What the role involves?

The core of the role is architecture. You design the complete technical solution for each fintech, and everything else in the role serves that design work. You architect end to end:

• The systems and solution architecture – how the systems, products and platforms are structured and fit together
• The data models and data architecture the system runs on
• The integration and orchestration architecture – APIs, rails and partner systems assembled into one coherent system
• The decision logic and analytics — risk, pricing, forecasting, unit economics — designed into the solution
• The workflows and product design that define how it all works
• Matching and managing partners — identifying the right partners for each client's needs, and working closely with them to deliver
• Directing the build — leading developers and specialists to implement your designs, owning the architecture and technical decisions through to launch

What the architecture accounts for. Your architecture has to account for the real conditions a fintech operates in – so, as you design, you also:

• Design for commercial viability — products whose revenue model and unit economics stack up
• Design within the regulatory landscape — solutions that are sound and compliant by structure
• Design to what investors need to see — translating a founder's vision, commercial and ideological, into an investable, well-architected business
• Design around the partner infrastructure — architecting on the partner systems Istimar orchestrates
• Design for adoption — producing the guides and learning materials that make the product usable

And you lead delivery across several engagements at once, coordinating and growing the team of developers and other specialists as Istimar scales.

What the role requires?

• 15+ years in finance, with real depth across banking, credit and risk, fx, capital markets and trade finance, as well as modern finance – Open Banking, embedded finance, payment rails and the emerging DeFi landscape
• Practical knowledge of Islamic finance – its core structures, principles and equity- and risk-sharing models – and the ability to translate them into sound product and system design
• Hands-on experience in software architecture and analytics design – designing systems, data models, workflows and decision logic, and directing the build
• Strong financial modeling and analytics capability, including BI and data tools such as Tableau and Power BI
• A practical, conceptual understanding of modern technology and how it's reshaping fintech – and the ability to stay ahead as it moves fast
• A strong grasp of the regulatory landscape and how it shapes what can be built
• Commercial judgement – how fintechs make money, and how investors assess value
• Proven project and delivery management, and the ability to lead and grow a team
• A degree in finance, economics or a related field, or a relevant professional qualification (e.g. CFA, FRM, ACCA/CA)

The opportunity

A role with genuine scope and impact – architecting ambitious next generation fintechs, working directly with founders. You'll be based at Level39 in Canary Wharf, Europe's leading fintech hub, home to around 200 fast-growth technology companies and a community of founders, investors and partners in the heart of one of the major global financial hubs.

We're looking for a full-stack developer to turn designs into amazing live products, fast.

The role

Our architect defines the product, workflows, data models and logic; you build it, wiring together APIs, rails and modules into something clean, reliable and live, and running it in production. This is assembly-and-integration more than build-from-scratch: we move quickly, use modern tooling, and don't over-engineer.

What you'll do

• Build and ship full-stack applications, front end and back end, from the architect's designs
• Integrate payment rails, BaaS providers, Open Banking and third-party APIs
• Deploy and run what you build — cloud hosting, basic DevOps, and keeping things reliable in production
• Use AI development tools (Cursor, Lovable, Replit) to build and iterate fast
• Work across several client products, and directly with clients

What we're looking for

• 8+ years building and shipping production apps
• Strong full-stack skills (e.g. React/TypeScript, Node or similar)
• Real fluency integrating third-party APIs — the core of the job
• Comfortable with cloud deployment and basic DevOps (e.g. AWS/GCP/Azure, CI/CD)
• Comfortable using AI coding tools to move faster
• Pragmatic, product-minded, and happy with a fast-moving, early-stage environment

Nice to have

• Fintech, payments or Open Banking experience

The opportunity

You will be working on exciting projects with next generation fintechs, working directly with Istimar's senior team and clients. You'll be based at Level39 in Canary Wharf, Europe's leading fintech hub, home to around 200 fast-growth technology companies and a community of founders, investors and partners in the heart of one of the major global financial hubs.

A senior security leader to own security strategy and governance across Istimar's work — and to lead clients' security programmes where they need it.

What the role involves

• Own the security strategy, policies and risk management for Istimar, and for clients on engagement
• Lead certification and audit readiness — building and running security programmes to ISO 27001, SOC 2, and PCI-DSS where relevant, and now ISO 42001 for AI
• Set the security standards and controls that products are designed and built to
• Own the security relationship with clients' partners, sponsor banks and investors — the questionnaires, attestations and posture that only a senior security owner can credibly sign off
• Translate technical risk into business terms for founders, boards and investors
• Guide the cybersecurity and delivery teams on priorities, risk and remediation

What we're looking for

• 10+ years in information security, including senior/CISO-level leadership, ideally in fintech or financial services
• Proven track record building and running security programmes and leading organisations through ISO 27001 and/or SOC 2 audits as the named owner; ISO 42001 (AI) an advantage
• Strong command of governance, risk and compliance (GRC) and frameworks such as ISO 27001, SOC 2, PCI-DSS and NIST
• Direct experience with the security expectations of sponsor banks and BaaS partners, and with investor and enterprise security due diligence
• A recognised senior security certification — e.g. CISSP, CISM or CRISC
• The judgement to right-size security for early-stage, fast-moving fintechs, and to manage several client engagements at once

A hands-on application and cloud security specialist who secures fintech products — for Istimar and for its clients.

What the role involves

• Perform secure-design and secure-code reviews, threat modelling, and application security assessments across client builds
• Run and interpret SAST, DAST, SCA and dependency/vulnerability scanning, and guide practical remediation
• Secure the integrations and data flows across payment providers, BaaS and Open Banking connections — authentication, authorisation, secrets management and cryptography
• Advise on cloud and infrastructure security across the stack (AWS/Azure/GCP), including secure CI/CD and DevSecOps practices
• Help clients meet the security expectations of their partners and sponsor banks, and support readiness for standards such as ISO 27001, SOC 2 and PCI-DSS
• Bring pragmatic, build-stage security judgement that reduces real risk without stalling delivery

What we're looking for

• 10+ years in application and cloud security, with hands-on fintech, payments or financial-services experience
• Strong command of the OWASP Top 10, secure SDLC, and common vulnerability and exploit patterns
• Hands-on with security tooling — e.g. SAST/DAST/SCA (Snyk, Checkmarx, SonarQube, Burp Suite, OWASP ZAP) and cloud security controls
• Experience securing APIs and third-party integrations, and familiarity with the requirements sponsor banks and BaaS partners impose
• Working knowledge of relevant standards and frameworks — ISO 27001, SOC 2, PCI-DSS, NIST
• A recognised security certification — e.g. CISSP, OSCP, CEH, CSSLP or AWS Security Specialty
• Comfortable operating fractionally across several engagements

A quality and testing specialist, brought in as client projects require, to make sure the fintech products Istimar assembles work correctly and reliably before they go live.

What the role involves

• Design and execute test plans and test cases across client builds — functional, integration and regression
• Test third-party and payment integrations rigorously — the highest-risk area in assembled fintech products: contract validation, error handling, callbacks, redirect flows and 3D Secure
• Validate end-to-end financial workflows and data integrity — that transactions, balances and records are correct after each operation
• Run API testing (REST/GraphQL) and integrate checks into CI/CD pipelines
• Use AI-assisted and modern automation tools to reach strong coverage efficiently, without building a heavy in-house test framework
• Work with the developer and architect to build quality in as products are assembled, and report issues and quality clearly to stakeholders

What we're looking for

• 5+ years in QA/testing, including hands-on fintech or payments experience
• Strong at testing API and third-party integrations — payment providers, BaaS and Open Banking connections
• Hands-on with modern testing and automation tools (e.g. Playwright, Cypress, Postman/REST-assured) and comfortable using AI-assisted testing to move fast
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and risk-based testing
• Sound understanding of financial data validation and the failure modes that matter in payments
• ISTQB certification an advantage
• Comfortable operating fractionally across several engagements

A data engineer for builds that are heavy on data — reconciliation, analytics and financial-intelligence work.

What the role involves

• Design and build the data pipelines and models that data-heavy fintech products run on — ingestion, transformation and delivery (ETL/ELT)
• Structure data for reconciliation, matching, analytics and reporting, and ensure it's accurate and reliable after every operation
• Work to the architect's data design and build it into something performant and maintainable
• Integrate and move data cleanly across sources, partners and systems
• Support the analytics and financial-intelligence work that sits on top of the data, including feeding AI/LLM-driven workflows where relevant
• Own data quality, governance and access controls for sensitive financial data

What we're looking for

• 5+ years in data engineering, ideally with financial or transactional data
• Strong in SQL and Python, and in building and maintaining ETL/ELT pipelines
• Hands-on with the modern data stack — e.g. a cloud warehouse (Snowflake, BigQuery or similar), dbt, and orchestration (Airflow, Dagster or similar)
• Solid data modelling, and an understanding of data quality, governance and security for sensitive data
• Comfortable working to an architect's design and delivering to it
• Comfortable operating fractionally, brought in for data-intensive builds
• Relevant cloud or data certifications (e.g. Snowflake, AWS/GCP/Azure data engineering) an advantage