Senior Engineering Manager, Issuing Platform

Engineering Manager · Manager · Full Time

SG - SingaporeSGD 180k – 260k3d ago
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Role

What you'll do.

As a Senior Engineering Manager for the Issuing Platform at Airwallex, you'll lead one or more engineering teams responsible for building and operating core card lifecycle management, high-throughput transaction processing, and settlement workflows that power a regulated financial infrastructure serving 675,000+ businesses globally. This role combines people leadership, technical architecture direction, and delivery ownership, requiring you to drive system reliability, scalability, and compliance while building a high-performing engineering culture. You'll partner across product, operations, and senior engineering to guide pragmatic decisions that balance innovation, stability, developer productivity, and cost efficiency in a fast-paced fintech environment.

Responsibilities

  • Team Leadership and Health: Own the health, execution, and long-term technical quality of one or more engineering teams. Provide strategic direction and ensure sustainable pace while maintaining high standards across all deliverables.
  • Engineering Culture and Development: Build a strong engineering culture through coaching, constructive feedback, performance management, career development planning, strategic hiring, and effective onboarding of new team members.
  • Technical Architecture and Direction: Drive technical direction and provide architectural guidance for scalable, resilient transaction-processing systems handling high-stakes financial workflows including card lifecycle management and settlement operations.
  • Platform Quality and Reliability: Improve system design, code quality, testing practices, reliability, observability, security posture, and operational excellence across the issuing platform to meet financial compliance and performance standards.
  • Cross-functional Strategic Alignment: Partner with product, operations, senior engineers, and other engineering leaders to align technical and delivery strategy with business priorities while managing dependencies and trade-offs.
  • Technology Decision Making: Guide pragmatic technology and platform decisions that balance innovation, stability, developer productivity, cost efficiency, and risk management in a regulated financial environment.

Qualifications

What we look for.

Technical

  • Distributed Systems Architecture

    Proven experience designing and delivering large-scale, distributed production systems at scale with deep understanding of failure modes, resilience patterns, and operational trade-offs.

  • Event-Driven and Streaming Architectures

    Hands-on experience architecting and operating event-driven systems and streaming platforms such as Kafka, with understanding of message ordering, durability, and at-least-once delivery guarantees.

  • Backend Development Languages

    Strong background in modern backend development using languages such as Java, Kotlin, Go, or Python with ability to evaluate language selection for different system components.

  • RESTful API Design at Scale

    Experience designing, implementing, and operating RESTful APIs at scale with attention to versioning, backward compatibility, rate limiting, and high-availability requirements.

  • Cloud Infrastructure and Containerization

    Cloud experience with GCP (preferred) or AWS, including containerized workload orchestration using Docker and Kubernetes, with understanding of resource management and scaling strategies.

  • Observability and Operational Tooling

    Familiarity with observability platforms and operational tooling such as Splunk, Grafana, and Prometheus; ability to guide effective monitoring strategies for complex systems.

  • Computer Science Fundamentals

    Solid understanding of core computer science concepts including data structures, algorithms, and object-oriented design principles essential for architectural decisions.

Education

  • Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or Related Field

    Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field providing foundational knowledge in computing principles and system design.

Experience

  • Professional Software Engineering Experience

    12+ years of professional software engineering experience building and operating production systems, with demonstrated progression from individual contributor through senior roles.

  • People Leadership Management

    At least 4+ years in a people leadership role directly managing engineering teams, with experience in hiring, performance management, career development, and building high-performing cultures.

  • Large-Scale System Delivery

    Track record of successfully designing, building, and operating complex production systems with millions of users or transactions, managing risks and operational challenges.

  • Technical Mentorship

    Demonstrated ability to mentor and develop engineers at various levels, fostering technical growth while building institutional knowledge and sustainable practices.

  • Fintech and Regulated Domains

    Preferred experience in fintech, payments, or other regulated financial domains with understanding of compliance requirements, financial accuracy, and operational controls.

  • High-Availability Systems Leadership

    Preferred prior experience leading teams responsible for high-availability, low-latency systems with appreciation for operational rigor and incident response excellence.

Skills

Required

  • Engineering Leadership

    Strategic and tactical people management including hiring, performance evaluation, career development, conflict resolution, and building high-performing teams.

  • Technical Architecture

    Ability to evaluate architectural trade-offs, guide technology selections, and communicate complex technical decisions to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

  • System Design and Scalability

    Deep understanding of designing scalable distributed systems with attention to consistency models, failure recovery, and operational characteristics.

  • Execution and Delivery

    Proven ability to drive execution, manage competing priorities, unblock teams, and deliver complex projects on schedule while maintaining quality standards.

  • Mentorship and Technical Coaching

    Ability to mentor engineers across experience levels, provide technical guidance, and help teams grow their capabilities in fintech and systems engineering.

  • Cross-Functional Collaboration

    Strong ability to partner effectively with product managers, operations teams, and peer engineering leaders to align on strategy and resolve complex dependencies.

  • Operational Excellence

    Commitment to observability, monitoring, incident response, reliability engineering, and continuous improvement of system operations and incident postmortems.

Preferred

  • Fintech and Payments Domain Expertise

    Nice to have

    Deep experience in payments processing, card issuance, settlement systems, or other regulated financial domains with understanding of compliance and operational controls.

  • JVM Ecosystem Mastery

    Nice to have

    Extensive experience with Java or Kotlin development frameworks such as Spring or Spring Boot, particularly for building scalable backend systems.

  • High-Availability Systems

    Nice to have

    Proven track record leading teams building and operating high-availability, low-latency systems with experience managing incident response and operational reliability.

  • Platform and Infrastructure Leadership

    Nice to have

    Experience building platform capabilities that serve multiple teams, with focus on developer productivity, observability, and standardized operational patterns.

Tech stack

Languages

JavaKotlinGoPython

Frameworks

Spring FrameworkSpring Boot

Databases

Distributed Transaction SystemsEvent Stores

Tools

KafkaDockerKubernetesGrafanaPrometheusSplunk

Other

GCP (Google Cloud Platform)AWS (Amazon Web Services)RESTful API ArchitectureEvent-Driven Architecture

Compensation

Pay and benefits.

Base·SGD 180,000 – 260,000

Equity·Stock options

Benefits

  • Equity and Stock Options

    Participate in company growth through competitive equity packages that align your success with Airwallex's mission in the global fintech market.

  • Professional Development and Learning

    Access to training budgets, technical conferences, mentorship programs, and continuous learning opportunities to advance your engineering leadership expertise.

  • Health and Wellness

    Comprehensive health insurance coverage, wellness programs, mental health support, and fitness benefits to support your physical and mental wellbeing.

  • Flexible Work Arrangements

    While this role requires five days weekly in the Singapore office for team collaboration, Airwallex supports flexible working practices across the organization.

  • Global Team and Impact

    Work with exceptional engineers and leaders across 27 offices globally, solving high-stakes problems that impact 675,000+ businesses in real-time commerce.

  • Innovation and Autonomy

    Be part of a builder culture where you own outcomes, make decisions with incomplete information, and have the autonomy to drive technical strategy and team excellence.

Process

Interview steps.

  1. 01

    Application Review and Screening

    Initial review of your background focusing on your management experience, systems engineering expertise, fintech domain knowledge, and alignment with Airwallex's operating principles.

  2. 02

    Recruiter Conversation

    Initial discussion to understand your career trajectory, motivations for the role, geographic considerations for Singapore-based position, and expectations for compensation and growth.

  3. 03

    Technical Assessment and Systems Design

    Deep dive into your approach to designing distributed payment systems, handling of failure modes, scalability considerations, and trade-off decisions in transaction processing.

  4. 04

    Leadership and Culture Fit Interview

    Conversation exploring your team leadership philosophy, approach to building engineering culture, how you handle underperformance, and alignment with Airwallex's founder-level ownership principles.

  5. 05

    Domain Knowledge Discussion

    Optional or supplementary conversation assessing your fintech and payments platform experience, understanding of regulatory requirements, and specific knowledge of card issuance workflows.

  6. 06

    Leadership Team Round

    Interviews with senior engineering leadership and potentially product or operations stakeholders to assess collaboration style, strategic thinking, and ability to influence across functions.

  7. 07

    Executive Conversation

    Final round with executive leadership discussing organizational strategy, long-term vision, career growth opportunities, and team setup expectations for the issuing platform.

Full posting

Original listing.

About Airwallex

Airwallex is the AI-native financial operating system for a real-time, intelligent economy. More than 675,000 businesses, including McLaren Racing, Qantas, SHEIN, and TikTok, use us, directly or through our platform partners, to run their financial operations or build and monetize financial products of their own.

We started in Melbourne in 2015 to build the infrastructure global commerce runs on. We're the regulated backbone behind global payments: not by accident, but by design. A decade plus, 85+ licenses, and a financial infrastructure spanning North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific.

We're co-headquartered in San Francisco and Singapore, with more than 2,700 people across 27 offices. We hire builders with founder-level energy, people who move fast with good judgment, dig in with real curiosity, and make calls from first principles rather than waiting to be told what to do. Read our operating principles to see it in full.

 

How you'll make impact

As a Senior Engineering Manager, Issuing Platform, you’ll lead one or more teams building and operating the core systems behind Airwallex’s issuing products, including card lifecycle management, high-throughput transaction processing, and clearance, settlement, and dispute workflows. You’ll combine people leadership, technical direction, and delivery ownership to help your teams build reliable, scalable systems for high-stakes financial workflows.

You’ll remain technically credible and engaged at an architectural level while focusing primarily on team health, execution, and long-term technical quality rather than acting as the primary individual contributor. You’ll partner with product, operations, senior engineers, and other engineering leaders to improve reliability, observability, security, developer productivity, and cost efficiency across the platform.

  • Own team health, execution, and long-term technical quality across one or more engineering teams.

  • Build a strong engineering culture through coaching, feedback, performance management, career development, hiring, and onboarding.

  • Drive technical direction and architectural guidance for scalable, resilient transaction-processing systems.

  • Improve system design, code quality, testing, reliability, observability, security, and operational excellence across the platform.

  • Partner with product, operations, senior engineers, and other engineering leaders to align technical and delivery strategy with business priorities.

  • Guide pragmatic technology and platform decisions that balance innovation, stability, developer productivity, and cost efficiency.

This is an in-office role — you’ll be in our Singapore office five days a week.

What we're looking for

Essentials

  • 12+ years of professional software engineering experience, with at least 4+ years in a people leadership role managing engineers directly.

  • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field.

  • Strong background in modern backend development using languages such as Java, Kotlin, Go, or Python.

  • Proven experience designing and delivering large-scale, distributed, production systems.

  • Solid understanding of computer science fundamentals and object-oriented design principles.

  • Hands-on experience with event-driven and streaming architectures, for example Kafka.

  • Experience designing and operating RESTful APIs at scale.

  • Cloud experience with GCP (preferred) or AWS, including containerized workloads using Docker and Kubernetes.

  • Familiarity with observability and operational tooling such as Splunk, Grafana, and Prometheus.

  • Demonstrated ability to mentor engineers and lead the execution of technical and delivery strategy.

Preferred

  • Experience in fintech, payments, or other regulated financial domains.

  • Deep experience with JVM-based ecosystems, including Java or Kotlin with Spring or Spring Boot.

  • Prior experience leading teams responsible for high-availability, low-latency systems.

You'll thrive here if

  • You own the outcome and you don't wait for permission to fix what's broken.

  • You're comfortable making decisions with incomplete information and moving quickly anyway.

  • You hold yourself to a high standard even when no one is watching. Quality and accountability aren't external expectations, they're internal ones.

  • You can advocate hard for a position, then fully support the team's direction once a call is made.

Learn more about your team

The Issuing Platform team at Airwallex own the core systems behind our issuing products: card lifecycle management, high-throughput transaction processing, and the clearance, settlement, and dispute workflows that keep money and data moving accurately. The tension is balancing low-latency, always-on processing with rigorous compliance, resilience, and financial accuracy. You'll thrive here if you're drawn to deep ownership and high-stakes systems, hard operational problems, and think carefully about edge cases and failure modes. If you want to build the infrastructure that makes card issuing reliable and scalable at Airwallex, this is the team at the center of that work.

 
 
 
 

Applicant Safety Policy: Fraud and Third-Party Recruiters

To protect you from recruitment scams, please be aware that Airwallex will not ask for bank details, sensitive ID numbers (i.e. passport), or any form of payment during the application or interview process. All official communication will come from an @airwallex.com email address. Please apply only through careers.airwallex.com or our official LinkedIn page.

Airwallex does not accept unsolicited resumes from search firms/recruiters. Airwallex will not pay any fees to search firms/recruiters if a candidate is submitted by a search firm/recruiter unless an agreement has been entered into with respect to specific open position(s). Search firms/recruiters submitting resumes to Airwallex on an unsolicited basis shall be deemed to accept this condition, regardless of any other provision to the contrary.

Equal opportunity

Airwallex is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We value diversity and anyone seeking employment at Airwallex is considered based on merit, qualifications, competence and talent. We don’t regard color, religion, race, national origin, sexual orientation, ancestry, citizenship, sex, marital or family status, disability, gender, or any other legally protected status when making our hiring decisions. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.

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