Senior Consultant, Payment Services (Toronto)

About the role

Senior Consultant, Global Payments (ISO 20022)

As a Senior Consultant in Global Payments (ISO 20022), you will make an impact by driving analysis, specification, and documentation to support engineering teams delivering solutions for SWIFT MT-to-MX migration, ISO 20022 processing, and integration across payments ecosystems.

You will be a valued member of the Capital Markets team and work collaboratively with engineering teams, payment platform stakeholders, and compliance systems.

In this role, you will:

• Elicit and document technical and functional requirements for ISO 20022 initiatives, translating CBPR+ guidelines and message definitions into detailed specifications
• Perform element-level data mapping between SWIFT MT and ISO 20022 MX messages, defining transformation rules, conditional logic, and exception handling
• Conduct technical gap analysis across payment platforms, middleware, and downstream systems to identify required changes and new components
• Define system behavior for MT/MX coexistence scenarios including truncation, character conversion, structured mapping, and fallback logic
• Support end-to-end delivery through interface specification, testing, defect triage, standards evaluation, and collaboration with screening and monitoring platforms

Work model — Hybrid

We believe hybrid work is the way forward as we strive to provide flexibility wherever possible. Based on this role's business requirements, this is a hybrid position requiring time in a client or Cognizant office. Regardless of your working arrangement, we are here to support a healthy work-life balance through our various wellbeing programs.

The working arrangements for this role are accurate as of the date of posting. This may change based on the project you are engaged in, as well as business and client requirements.

What you must have to be considered

• 8+ years of experience as a BSA, Technical Analyst, or Systems Analyst within payments technology or financial messaging
• Expert knowledge of SWIFT MT messages (MT103, MT202, MT202COV, MT199, MT900/910, MT950) and ISO 20022 schemas (pacs, camt, pain) including CBPR+ guidelines
• Strong experience with ISO 20022 data mapping, including transformation logic, conditional rules, and exception handling
• Proficiency with XML/XSD, XPath, and XSLT for message interpretation and transformation specification
• Experience defining integration logic for payment middleware and platforms (e.g., Volante, Bottomline, Axway, IBM MQ, Kafka, SWIFT Alliance)
• Strong SQL skills for data analysis, validation, and requirement verification
• Experience designing APIs, message queues, and file-based integrations within a payments ecosystem
• Familiarity with SWIFT infrastructure (FIN, FINplus, InterAct, FileAct) and correspondent banking models

These will help you succeed

• Experience working with sanctions screening and transaction monitoring platforms from an integration perspective
• Knowledge of regulatory frameworks including travel rule (31 CFR 1010.410), FATF Recommendation 16, and OFAC screening requirements
• Experience modeling end-to-end payment flows using sequence diagrams, data flow diagrams, and state transition diagrams
• Ability to support testing, defect triage, and release cycles for SWIFT SR and ISO 20022 initiatives
• Strong collaboration skills to work across engineering, compliance, and payment platform teams

Equal Opportunity Employer

Cognizant is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, color, religion, national origin, disability, protected Veteran status, age, or any other characteristic protected by law.