Obsidiam is hiring a Lead Software Architect to own the technical foundation of a regulated cross-border payments platform serving Latin America — serious money movement, built to a regulated standard, in a fast-growing market. You'll turn an ambitious product vision into a concrete architecture, decide what we build versus integrate, and shape the engineering team around it. WHAT YOU'LL DO Translate our product and business vision into a clear technical blueprint. Design the overall system architecture for a secure, regulated, multi-jurisdiction payments platform. Own the build-vs-buy and technology decisions across the stack — custody/wallet infrastructure, liquidity, banking and local payment rails, FX, the API layer, and reconciliation. Architect for compliance and security from day one — AML and the controls a regulated payments business requires. Define the team we need: estimate headcount and the specialties required (backend, frontend, DevOps/SRE, security, data engineering, AI). Build the development roadmap and milestones; set engineering standards and CI/CD. Identify and mitigate technical and security risks — key management, transaction integrity, custody — before significant capital is committed. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR Senior/principal-level experience as a software architect or staff+ engineer, ideally including a from-scratch (0→1) build. Deep, hands-on expertise in AI, machine learning, and operations research and optimization (OR) systems — this is central to the role, not peripheral. Strong background in payments, fintech, or digital-asset infrastructure, including stablecoin, treasury, or cross-border FX. Deep distributed-systems and API-design expertise; event-driven, cloud-native architectures (Kubernetes, GitOps). Security-first mindset and experience designing for regulated environments. Hands-on with one or more of: wallet/custody infrastructure, liquidity/trading integrations, banking-as-a-service or local payment rails. Excellent English; Spanish and/or Portuguese a plus. LOCATION & SETUP We're based in San José, Costa Rica — and we're deliberately hiring beyond it. The first month is on-site in San José with the founding team: full immersion in the product and the architecture. We support travel and accommodation. After that, the role is primarily remote — but not guaranteed fully remote. You should be ready to spend time in Costa Rica on a recurring basis and to travel frequently whenever the project calls for it. We need genuine commitment to being on the ground when it matters, with working-hours overlap across the Americas. Open to candidates across Latin America and internationally who can commit to that. #J-18808-Ljbffr