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Since its establishment in 2005, Alipay has gradually grown into an open platform for digital life with 1.2 billion users, supported by an evolving technical architecture.
In the past, we have shared the technological evolution of Alipay along the way of the 11th National Congress. Today, we have invited Cao Gang, the global architect of Alipay, to share with you the experience of designing architecture for 1.2 billion users.
A global architect is a person who provides services for architecture governance and architecture evolution throughout the company. However, Cao Gang did not become a global architect at the beginning, but started from the front-line research and development, and Grow together with Alipay.
Alipay global architect Cao Gang
Front-line R&D: Grow with the company and master the concept of architecture
Cao gang joined Alipay in September 2008 and was one of the company’s early employees. After joining the company, he was responsible for the development of quick payment business and e-banking business, and also participated in the construction of the company’s third-generation structure.
“The third-generation architecture is a very milestone architecture system. Lu Su Lao Miao proposed the SOA architecture model in the company, laying a foundation for the technology of alipay today.” “Cao recalled. At that time, Alipay and banks were connected through a special banking gateway system, through which people could pay by Alipay and then jump to the bank’s online banking system for payment. But the system is so jumbled up that it is hard to maintain and fix, let alone expand. Cao gangchuan and colleagues, the bank gateway system evolution into financial network platform, through SOA concept shall be carried out in accordance with the duties and areas layering and peel contains financial exchange payment instructions to the bank transition layer and deconstruct message gateway, and the error between Banks service processing layer, formed the basis of the pay treasure to financial networks today. In this process, Cao Gang gradually deepened his understanding of architecture.
During this period of front-line research and development, he believed that the most important thing he gained was that he quickly grasped the architectural concept of SOA, including the architectural design method and the whole operation and maintenance system, completed the construction of SOA architecture from scratch, and the architectural details from the bottom to the front end, etc. This laid the groundwork for his later responsibilities.
Becoming an architect: From bottom to top
Prior to becoming a global architect, Mr. Cao worked as an architect in the field of financial network platform and wealth.
Compared with front-line RESEARCH and development, the work of architects is no longer limited to the program development of a certain system, but pays more attention to whether the systematization of the whole platform is perfect enough, where there are shortcomings, where optimization is needed, and which old systems need governance.
As a financial network architect, cao gangchuan redesigned bank card money flows in system, it involves the ability of payment, refund, reconciliations, query and so on, compared with before is a higher level of abstraction, through this kind of abstract form the two systems, respectively, into the system of real-time trading on and asynchronous processing, batch processing system of outflow.
During this period, Cao Gang also participated in the transformation of the company’s fourth-generation structure. After Ali ALL IN Wireless, the business volume of payment surged, as shown IN the double Eleven Promotion, is the peak payment will double several times every year. Therefore, the design of high availability and high concurrency of financial network has become the focus of Cao Gang’s attention.
When dealing with the challenge of peak traffic, in addition to the distributed architecture and unialization of Alipay, Cao Gang also worked with banks to expand capacity and pressure test on Singles Day every year, forming a whole set of capacity planning and full-link pressure test system to cope with the big push. “Double eleven, from a certain extent changed the entire domestic banking IT infrastructure capacity.” As someone who has worked with banks on the front line over the years, he felt this most deeply.
In 2016, at the request of the company, Cao Gang joined the newly established Fortune Group as an architect in the field of fortune.
Although they are both architects, compared with the past, the financial network is at the bottom of the business, which is part of the financial infrastructure and does not directly face the end users. Wealth is like the checkout counter of the payment business, closer to the front-line business, which belongs to the top of the business. His career change is like moving from the bottom of the business to the top of the business, which is a big change.
During this period, Cao Gang gained the most from a deeper understanding of the business, a broader vision and a clearer understanding of the overall structure of the architecture. When making financial network architecture, it is not very comprehensive to look from the bottom up. In the field of wealth, businesses can be more complete and we can have a profound understanding of the structure system of Alipay. Including understanding the contents of each field in the whole business process as what is the role and position, wealth management products, for example, why today we attend the wealth management products, the products need, from which financial institutions to introduce what are involved in the process of cooperation to make the product successful in the field of shelves in the face of the user, and so on, That’s what he learned as an architect in the wealth sector.
As an architect in the wealth field, Cao Gang promoted the structure of the financial asset trading layer from chimney type to platform type, creating a middle stage of financial assets. In the past, the products are divided into many lines of business, including the balance, fund, on a regular basis, such as gold, this is a chimney, cao gangchuan, general part of of all kinds of public assets of abstracting, precipitation for unified platform for all kinds of business services, including financial assets and unified registration, metering, fund settlement process unity, etc., at the same time maintain the flexibility of each business, This is a great test of the architect’s ability to judge and balance between architecture and integration.
Global Architect: Drives architecture evolution and governance across the company
In 2019, Cao Gang has been working in the field of architecture for 6 years. In the past 6 years, he has gained an in-depth understanding and practice of business and technology in the financial field, hoping to have a look at a larger platform. This year, he joined the Architecture Department as a global architect.
The core work goal of the global architect is to promote the evolution of the entire Technical architecture of Alipay, at the same time to promote the upgrade and development of the entire technical organization, and assist CTO to implement the top-level technical strategy of the whole company. They need to form a good connection between CTO strategy and various business lines, promote the top-level strategy to be implemented in each business line, and at the same time, explore the common problems of each line, so as to form a topic that drives the evolution of the global technology architecture.
Unlike local domain architects, global architects need to focus on company-wide issues. Most of the time, the global architect has to think about how to make the architecture more agile, enabling business flexibility and autonomy on the one hand, but at the same time depositing common capabilities on the other. In conjunction with the company’s business and technical strategic directions, the global architect defines the overall direction of the architecture upgrade and the horizontal technical issues that are currently being addressed. For example, alipay’s horizontal topics this year include cloud native, safe production, research and development efficiency, data intelligence, etc., and then deeply participate in or be responsible for the specific implementation process of some of these topics.
Another part of the global architect’s job is to focus on what doesn’t make sense in the existing architecture. For example, research and development efficiency, low-level duplication of construction, unclear boundaries, and unreasonable division of labor need to be addressed. In the past, we tend to rely on the architect’s expert experience to solve these problems, with the trend of digital transformation, architectural work also in transition, we need to get the technology research and development process and management process, digital platform, booster ant technical architecture optimization and evolution, development and upgrading of technology organization, through data mining and analysis, set up related data analysis products, It is directly provided to CTO and technical leaders of each line, so that they can better find some problems in the technical field and provide expert experience and solutions to assist the technical management in making decisions, so as to promote the improvement of problems more efficiently.
Alipay faces the whole society to recruit global architect
Currently, pay treasure is open to the digital life from financial payment platform, platform upgrade, we need to build the world’s largest digital life open platform, pratt &whitney financial platform, we will build a new generation of technology architecture of the system to better support the business strategy, business development at high speed, to upgrade such architecture throughout the company level, It is equivalent to changing the engine of an airplane in flight, which requires global coordination and good at making choices and decisions, posing great challenges to global architects.
As can be seen from the above, the work of global architects is extremely important, and they have high requirements for ability and experience. In order to attract more talents, Alipay decides to recruit global architects from the whole society.
As for what global architects need, Cao Gang himself is a good template: he has made achievements in vertical fields, has certain technical influence, and can be regarded as an authority in this field; Proven ability, experience in leading a medium size or above team, while pursuing development and layout in a larger field, looking to develop on a larger platform. This is alipay’s portrait of the global architect candidate.
In addition, there is an architecture culture in Alipay, which has been passed down from Lu Su Lao Miao at the very beginning through mentoring, including four abilities or characteristics that global architects need to possess:
First, business insight is required. Global architects are more focused on business architecture and application architecture, and therefore have a unique understanding of their area of responsibility. Take Alipay as an example. What is the essence of payment that you need to understand? Solve what problem? What’s at the bottom? Including payment, accounting, clearing, settlement, trading platform and so on, need to have their own understanding.
Secondly, we should keep an open mind. Some problems may not be felt so strongly by the front-line students, such as some cooperation efficiency problems between the two teams, but if the architect wants to solve them, it may hurt the students. So should we solve them? There are specific trade-offs involved, and in this process, you have to keep an open mind and be able to tolerate conflicts.
The third is that architects need to have a global vision. The essence of architecture is to make trade-offs and trade-offs. If you can only see one part of the decision, the result will be blind men feeling the elephant, and the decision will definitely go wrong. To solve problems in local areas, we need to start from a global perspective, otherwise the final direction may run counter to the direction of the whole company. This is an even more essential quality for the global architect.
The last is to focus on results, which requires a strong push. Architects must not just draw a few diagrams, but also implement them into the principles of the architecture, the elements of the architecture, and the review of the departmental solutions. Because the global architect is independent of the line of business, it is very difficult to move something forward in such an environment, involving a lot of teamwork and communication. You need to have a strong point of view and convince a lot of people to get the results you want.
One of your architecture decisions will affect more than 1.2 billion people. The global architect of Alipay is vacant, and you are welcome to contact us!
Join us
Team Introduction:
In 2020, Ant Financial will devote itself to creating new digital services, helping merchants with digital transformation and upgrading and service industry digitalization with one-stop digital life services, and realizing an open and win-win digital life ecology. Through the construction of credible original and sustainable intelligence, the construction of nuclear safety production system, to create the first brand of fintech. This is not only a Vuca-style exploration for the business system, but also a new challenge for the ant technology system. In this process, we will also maintain a dynamic and efficient interaction between the business architecture and the technical architecture. We hope to invite a more diverse talent partnership to go out of this road no one has gone before.
Job Description:
Responsible for the design and governance of the global technical architecture of Ant Financial, optimized the links between business architecture and technical architecture, improved the efficiency of commercial design and technical architecture design, and improved the efficiency of R&D.
Job Requirements:
1. Leading enterprises of Internet, communication enterprises, financial institutions and investment banks, experts in strategic research, planning, management, architecture design (business architecture, technical architecture) and other fields under complex systems.
2. Make outstanding achievements in the current field, lead a business or technical field to a new level of development, broaden vision, and be able to handle large technical battles.
3. Strong sense of goal, able to push the cooperative team to achieve results in a complex environment, with a strong perspective and attitude, quick thinking, and able to lead technological innovation.
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