Engineering Lead/Manager, Risk (Relocate to Singapore)

Airwallex1 months ago

Location

US - San Francisco

Type

Full Time

Salary

USD 250 – 450

Level

Senior

Role

Engineering Manager

Posted

Mar 4, 2026

Full TimeSenior

The role

Summary

Airwallex seeks an experienced Engineering Lead/Manager for their Risk Platform team in Singapore, requiring relocation from the US. This hands-on leadership role combines strategic technical direction with people management, overseeing fraud detection systems and risk management products that protect over 200,000 global businesses. The ideal candidate brings 8+ years of backend engineering experience with 2+ years in engineering management, deep expertise in distributed systems, and fintech/risk management background.

What you'll do

Strategic Technical Leadership: Provide strategic leadership for mission-critical fraud and risk platform, aligning technical direction and capacity planning with business goals and regulatory requirements

Cross-functional Collaboration: Work with PM, Design, Ops, Commercial and Strategy teams to shape the future of fraud management products

Team Building and Management: Build and scale high-performing engineering organization including managers and senior ICs, set goals, establish career paths, and run performance processes

Product Roadmap Development: Partner closely with PM to define roadmap, prioritize measurable backlog, and deliver outcomes that improve detection rates and reduce false positives

Architecture Ownership: Serve as accountable owner for architecture and system quality across services, ensuring reliability, scalability, and cost efficiency for real-time decisioning

Hands-on Technical Leadership: Guide designs, review critical code and APIs, and de-risk complex initiatives with pragmatic technical deep dives

Quality Standards Implementation: Drive design and code quality by instituting standards, reviews, and automated checks that raise the bar without slowing teams down

Cross-team Coordination: Ensure collaboration with platform, data, SRE, security, and global engineering teams; remove blockers and foster clear interfaces and SLAs

Operational Excellence: Own on-call readiness, incident response, postmortems, observability, capacity planning, and continuous reliability improvements

Talent Development: Lead talent strategy including recruiting, onboarding, and developing engineers and managers while building diverse teams

What we look for

Technical

Backend Engineering Experience8+ years in backend engineering with complex, distributed systems in production

Java ProficiencyExpert-level Java skills including multi-threading, high-concurrency patterns, I/O/NIO, and network programming

Distributed SystemsDeep experience with high-availability, high-throughput architectures including caching, partitioning, and consistency models

Spring FrameworkProficiency with Spring/Spring Boot, HTTP, TCP/IP, REST, and build tools like Gradle/Maven

ContainerizationPractical experience with Docker and Kubernetes for containerization and orchestration

Risk Management SystemsExperience with risk-specific components: rule engines, feature stores, model serving, A/B testing

Machine LearningWorking knowledge of ML in production and data analysis skills for model performance interpretation

Cloud PlatformsExperience with Alibaba Cloud, AWS, or GCP including networking, security, and cost management

Education

Computer Science DegreeBachelor's degree in Computer Science or related technical field

Experience

Engineering Management2+ years in engineering management role with team leadership responsibilities

Fintech ExperienceRisk management or Fintech product engineering experience required

Production SystemsOwnership of complex, distributed systems in production environments

Global Team LeadershipExperience leading teams across multiple time zones and cultures preferred

Skills

Required skills

Java ProgrammingExpert-level Java with multi-threading, concurrency, and network programming

Distributed SystemsDeep expertise in high-availability, scalable system architecture

Engineering Management2+ years leading engineering teams and managing technical delivery

Spring FrameworkProficient with Spring/Spring Boot for enterprise application development

Container TechnologiesHands-on experience with Docker and Kubernetes orchestration

Risk ManagementFintech or risk management product engineering background

System ArchitectureExperience designing and implementing complex backend systems

Nice to have

Polyglot ProgrammingAdditional languages: Kotlin, Scala, Python, or Golang

Machine LearningProduction ML experience and data analysis capabilities

Cloud PlatformsExperience with Alibaba Cloud, AWS, or GCP

Big Data TechnologiesFamiliarity with Hadoop, Kafka, Flink, Spark for large-scale processing

NoSQL DatabasesExperience with Cassandra, Redis, and other NoSQL systems

Multi-disciplinary LeadershipLeadership across frontend, backend, data/ML, and SRE teams

Regulatory KnowledgeUnderstanding of PCI DSS, SOC 2, and payment industry standards

Global CommunicationFluency in English for international team collaboration

Compensation & benefits

Salary

USD 250 – 450 (annual)

Benefits

Relocation Support

Full relocation assistance for move from US to Singapore

Global Team Environment

Work with 2,000+ innovative professionals across 26 global offices

High-Growth Company

Join a US$8 billion valued unicorn backed by tier-1 investors including Visa, Mastercard, and Sequoia

Career Development

Accelerated learning opportunities and true ownership in building the future of global payments

Cutting-edge Technology

Work with latest technologies including ML, AI, and advanced risk management systems

Equal Opportunity

Inclusive workplace committed to diversity and equal opportunity employment

Mission-Critical Impact

Direct impact on protecting over 200,000 global businesses from fraud and risk

Interview process

1
Initial Screening — Phone/video screening with talent acquisition team to discuss background, experience, and interest in relocation to Singapore
2
Technical Leadership Interview — Deep dive into technical leadership experience, system design capabilities, and management philosophy with engineering leadership
3
System Design Session — Hands-on system design interview focused on distributed systems, scalability, and risk management architecture
4
Management Case Study — Leadership scenario-based interview covering team building, conflict resolution, and strategic decision-making
5
Cross-functional Collaboration — Interview with Product, Risk, and Operations stakeholders to assess collaboration and business acumen
6
Technical Deep Dive — Code review and technical discussion with senior engineers focusing on Java, distributed systems, and production experience
7
Final Interview — Executive interview with senior leadership covering vision alignment, cultural fit, and relocation commitment
8
Reference Checks — Professional reference verification focusing on technical leadership and team management capabilities