Manochitra Selvam
Reading,WBK
Summary
Application Architect and Backend software engineer with 16 years of professional, hands-on experience building secure, scalable Java/Spring Boot systems, including 3 years leading cloud-native microservices architecture for a payment network platform. Skilled in domain modelling, designing systems that are easy to understand, test and evolve, and structuring solutions that avoid single points of failure. Experienced operating and supporting mission-critical, PCI-regulated financial services applications end-to-end, from design and secure coding through testing, zero-downtime release, production support and incident investigation. Formally trained (Oracle Certified Professional - Java SE, AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner) with a track record of coaching engineers on coding practices and design principles, and managing stakeholders across multiple concurrent work streams.
Overview
1
1
Certification
3
3
years of post-secondary education
17
17
years of professional experience
Work history
Principal Application Architec
Discover Financial Services
2023.10 - Current
- Acted as application architect for Partner Experience domain across network platform, partner product portal, and referral management, influencing technical decisions for secure, scalable, cloud-native microservices components.
- Upgraded payment platform to support variable IIN/BIN lengths and 6–19 digit account numbers while maintaining backward compatibility, enabling seamless adoption of evolving payment network standards without impacting existing client integrations.
- Led backend architecture for high-volume referral platform through 400% month-over-month surge, defining scalable, resilient API and workflow-automation patterns that avoided single points of failure and enabled handling of up to 750 referrals per day.
- Designed scalable backend capabilities for partner onboarding using domain model techniques, enhancing request-handling capacity from 100 to 1,000 requests per day and aligning Tier 3 APIs to service-quality target of 97% of requests completing in under 500ms.
- Designed Kafka consumer application for partner onboarding system, applying event-driven architecture and asynchronous messaging patterns to decouple onboarding workflows and improve platform resilience.
- Coached engineering teams on coding practices, design principles, and architecture patterns through Architecture Community of Practice sessions on microservices, C4 modelling, and reusable design standards.
- Use AI tools for design analysis, documentation, refactoring support and test-case generation while ensuring compliance and architecture governance control.
Application Engineer
Discover Financial Services
2021.12 - 2023.10
- Led migration of WebSphere Application Server to OpenShift Container Platform, modernising legacy Java deployment patterns and improving release repeatability, container readiness and zero-downtime deployment capability; reduced deployment lead time by 80-90%.
- Implemented multi-factor authentication for a CAS SSO-enabled legacy application to bring it into compliance with PCI security requirements, protecting the platform and its customers from malicious actors.
- Developed Spring Boot and Spring Batch components for clearing and settlement processing, parsing and tokenising settlement files at high volume within strict performance SLAs.
- Implemented RabbitMQ for asynchronous processing in Spring Batch remote partitioning, distributing work across partitions to process a settlement file of up to 16 million transactions within a 30-minute SLA; used CompletableFuture for parallel processing within each chunk to improve throughput.
- Built React.js dashboards and operational UIs to improve production visibility for network participants and platform users, supporting faster issue investigation.
- Integrated payment gateways and downstream services, improving data-processing reliability through validation, screening and controlled exception handling.
- Contributed to DevOps automation using Ansible, Jenkins and CI/CD tooling, removing manual deployment steps and reducing build/deploy lead time.
Full Stack Engineer
Barclays
2020.04 - 2021.11
- Developed REST APIs and integration logic for a payment gateway migration from ISO 8583 to ISO 20022, building Karate automation suites to test API contracts, message mapping, error handling and end-to-end payment flows.
- Led a team of 10 full-stack engineers, managing stakeholders and prioritising delivery across design, development, code review, automation testing, release coordination and production deployment.
Developer
Cognizant Technology Solutions
2009.12 - 2019.12
- Delivered enterprise Java applications across insurance and finance domains, covering REST APIs, backend services, batch jobs, database integration and legacy modernisation.
- Led module design and implementation, mentored junior developers, and supported production issue investigation and resolution for mission-critical applications.
- Improved maintainability and release quality through code reviews, unit and integration testing, and reusable component patterns.
Education
Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.) - Electrical and Electronics Engineering
Anna University
India 2006.01 - 2009.01
Skills
- Languages & Frameworks: Core Java (recent versions), Spring Boot, Spring Batch, Spring Security, REST APIs, Drools, Reactjs
- Architecture & Domain Modelling: Cloud-native microservices, domain-driven design (DDD), C4 modelling, hexagonal architecture, CQRS, event-driven architecture, NFR-led API design
- Testing & Quality: Unit, component, integration and end-to-end testing; Karate API test automation; p95/p99 throughput and latency measurement
- Cloud & Platform: AWS (Certified Cloud Practitioner), OpenShift Container Platform, WebSphere migration, containerisation
- Data & Messaging: Relational data stores, Kafka, RabbitMQ, Spring Batch remote partitioning, CompletableFuture parallel processing, high-volume batch file processing, data validation & screening
- Reliability, Security & Operations: PCI-compliant secure coding, OAuth 20, OIDC, SSO/MFA integration, zero-downtime release patterns, production incident investigation and root-cause resolution, JVM/GC and performance tuning
- DevOps: Jenkins, Ansible, CI/CD pipeline automation
- Leadership: Coaching & mentoring, stakeholder management, architecture governance, Architecture Community of Practice facilitation
LEADERSHIP & COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
- Lead Architecture Community of Practice sessions, promoting architecture standards, reusable patterns, C4 modelling and engineering governance.
- Coached team members towards AWS Cloud Practitioner certification, improving cloud fundamentals and AWS service awareness across the team.
- Delivered a Women in Technology community session on OpenShift Container Platform debugging and deployment practices.
- Active member of APAC resource groups, supporting collaboration, inclusion and knowledge-sharing.
Accomplishments
- High-Volume Spring Batch File Processing - Delivered a Spring Batch file-processing solution handling up to 300 files/day and 16 million records per file, meeting 4- and 6-minute component SLAs and a 30-minute P90 end-to-end SLA.
- Legacy Modernisation - Migrated WebSphere Application Server workloads to OpenShift Container Platform, cutting deployment lead time by 80-90% and improving release frequency and environment provisioning time.
- Workflow Automation - Designed referral management bot/search automation that absorbed a 400% month-over-month increase in referrals without added manual effort.
- Partner Onboarding Enhancement - Co-designed partner onboarding architecture with the Domain Architect, scaling capacity from 100 to 1,000 requests/day through reusable APIs, workflow automation, and authentication/authorization enhancements.
Certification
- AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate (In Progress)
- Oracle Certified Professional - Java SE - Oracle
Timeline
Principal Application Architec
Discover Financial Services
2023.10 - Current
Application Engineer
Discover Financial Services
2021.12 - 2023.10
Full Stack Engineer
Barclays
2020.04 - 2021.11
Developer
Cognizant Technology Solutions
2009.12 - 2019.12
Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.) - Electrical and Electronics Engineering
Anna University
2006.01 - 2009.01