Principal Architect

About Verto

At Verto, we're on a mission to democratise global finance and empower businesses in Emerging Markets to reach the world. Founded by British-Nigerian entrepreneurs Ola Oyetayo and Anthony Oduu, our roots in Africa provided a firsthand understanding of the significant challenges businesses face with cross-border payments, ranging from illiquid currencies and high fees to slow transactions. This deep-rooted insight is why Africa remains a core focus, as we're committed to bridging the gap between emerging and developed markets and fostering global economic growth.

What started as an FX solution for the Nigerian Naira has evolved into a market-leading platform, enabling thousands of businesses to seamlessly transfer billions of dollars annually. We believe that where you do business shouldn’t determine your success or ability to scale. We're creating equal access to the easy payment and liquidity solutions that are already a given in developed markets.

We're not alone in realising this crucial need; we're backed by world-class investors including Y-Combinator, Quona, and MEVP. With Verto receiving the Milken-Motsepe Prize, appearing on CNBCs list of fastest growing UK companies, the Deloitte Fast 50 and Sifted’s fastest-growing UK tech companies, we are building a seamless cross-border payment future.

Join us as we continue to grow and transform global finance.

Role Overview

We are looking for a Principal Engineer - AI/ML & Automation to lead our transition into an AI-native financial infrastructure. In this role, you won't be building basic LLM wrappers or chatbots. You will architect autonomous, production-grade AI systems that directly handle cross-border FX, treasury rebalancing, and automated compliance.

You will operate as a top-tier technical anchor, sitting directly under engineering leadership to define architecture, set engineering standards, and turn complex manual financial workflows into unsupervised, resilient microservices.

The Mission: AI-Native Fintech

Verto is not just moving money. We are re-engineering global finance. The next chapter of that story is an AI-First transition, and we are hiring five Principal Engineers to lead it.

Your mandate is to move beyond "wrappers" and build deep, integrated AI/ML systems that automate the complex lifecycle of cross-border FX, treasury liquidity, and global compliance. You will sit directly under the Director level as a technical anchor, responsible for the next wave of Verto's intelligent infrastructure.

The Work, in One Paragraph

Verto moves money across 49+ currencies. The treasury rebalancing, KYC/AML reviews, FX hedging, and rate decisions make that possible; most of it still runs on humans clicking through dashboards. Your job is to replace those workflows with AI systems that are faster, more accurate, and run without supervision. Not chatbots. Not wrappers. Production automation that touches real money.

What You Will Architect

• Automated Treasury: Predictive liquidity management across 49+ currency corridors. The system decides when to rebalance, where, and how much, and is right often enough to be trusted with the call.
• Smart Compliance: AI-driven KYC/AML anomaly detection targeting an 80% reduction in manual intervention. Every false positive costs us money. Every false negative costs us more.
• FX Marketplace Intelligence: Dynamic rate optimization and predictive hedging on live transaction flow.

These are not research projects. They ship. They handle real customer money. They have to be right.

The Bar: Radical Autonomy

We are looking for technical pioneers, not passengers. If any of the following sounds like a stretch, this is not your role:

• Zero Hand-Holding: You are the expert in the room. You define the path, you do not wait for a map. No one is handing you a spec, a model choice, or an architecture.
• High Agency: You own the outcome from whiteboard to production monitoring. If a library does not exist, you build it. If a model is latent, you optimize it. If vector DB benchmarks for our workload are unclear, you run them yourself.
• Continuous Evolution: The AI landscape moves at a breakneck pace. You read papers on Friday and prototype on Monday. No one is going to send you to a course.
• Dependability: You are the technical bedrock. When you ship, the system is resilient, secure, observable, and production-hardened from day one.
• Technical Anchoring: When squads disagree on AI architecture, your call settles it. You set the standard for AI engineering excellence in Verto and run the deep code reviews that hold it.

The AI/ML Technical Frontier

We focus on deep implementation, not basic API calls. You will lead the evaluation and implementation of our AI stack:

• Core AI Platforms: AWS Bedrock and GCP Vertex AI for model orchestration and fine-tuning.
• Orchestration: LangChain, LlamaIndex, or custom agentic workflows. (We do not care which; we care that you know the trade-offs).
• Vector Infrastructure: Pinecone, Weaviate, Milvus, or PGVector on our Aurora clusters. (Your call, with a benchmark to back it up).
• Data Pipelines: RAG architectures ingesting multi-currency transaction data and regulatory documents.
• Evaluation & Observability: Ragas, Weights & Biases, or whatever you can prove works.

Core Tech Stack & Integration

Verto is a Serverless-First organization. You must be comfortable working within a high-scale, event-driven ecosystem:

• Backend: Node.js (v20+), TypeScript
• Compute: AWS Lambda, Step Functions, EventBridge
• Data: Aurora MySQL 8.x, MongoDB Atlas, Redis
• Streaming: AWS MSK (Kafka) for real-time transaction events
• Infrastructure: Serverless Framework, Terraform, AWS CodeBuild
• Speed to Market: Prototype, validate, and scale AI features in an environment where deployment cycles are measured in days, not months.

What You Need

• 8+ years of core engineering experience with a track record of building complex distributed systems.
• Deep AI/ML implementation experience (not hobbyist projects). You can discuss the trade-offs between different LLMs, embedding models, and vector search strategies in 90 seconds.
• Proven IC excellence: You have been the "go-to" person for the hardest technical problems in your previous organisations.

Best If You Have

• Fintech / payments background is a significant plus, especially familiarity with SWIFT, local payment rails, and FX risk.

What We Are Not Looking For

• Engineers who need a tech lead to unblock them.
• "AI experience" that begins and ends at calling the OpenAI API.
• People who treat production hardening as someone else's job.
• Anyone whose first instinct on a hard problem is to schedule a meeting.

At Verto, we provide the runway, not the training wheels. If you are a self-driven engineer who wants to own the technical vision and execute at the highest level, apply now.

Life At Verto

Perks

• Insurance paid by the company
• Health and wellness benefits (with specific added benefits depending on the location of the role)
• Yearly salary review based on inflation, personal and business performance
• Access to entire Udemy’s library
• Budget for professional development courses
• Work-From-Anywhere policy for certain durations
• Integration programme (opportunity to work from our global offices)
• Regular team social events
• Pension scheme (depending on the role location)
• Flexible work arrangements
• Exposure to work with globally distributed teams
• Location specific benefits like car lease policy, cycle to work, gym membership, etc.

You’ll Fit Right In If You

• Love asking “why?”
• Value solving problems over just completing tasks
• Understand sync vs. async communication practices
• Thrive in ambiguity and change
• Actively seek feedback
• Prioritise impact over activity
• Are fun to work with - we love good humour!

Culture

• Our Core Values: These values reflect our focus, energy, and shared expectations.
• Champion the Mission: We are driven by curiosity and belief to solve global cross-border payment challenges.
• Be the Best: We are open, take calculated risks, focus on results, and excel in our work.
• Work as One: We transparently share failures and successes.
• Go the Extra Mile: We deliver beyond expectations and achieve the impossible.
• Customer First: We creatively solve problems and boldly design better experiences for customers.
• Run with It: We are determined, embrace challenges, own tasks, act swiftly, and deliver results.
• Industry Competitive Compensation & Benefits: We reward employees for their value to the business with competitive compensation and benefits across all locations. This includes performance-based salary reviews, comprehensive health and wellness benefits, generous paid time off, and flexible working arrangements to support your career and life.

Diversity & Inclusion at Verto

Verto is an equal opportunities employer and we value diversity. Anyone seeking employment at Verto is considered based on Merit, Competence, Qualifications and their Talent. We are proud to be a truly international team and we do not discriminate in our hiring process.