# Staff Software Engineer, Growth **Company:** [Airwallex](https://scaleengineer.com/companies/airwallex) Lead the technical architecture and scalable infrastructure for Airwallex's AI-native Growth platform, which powers customer acquisition, activation, and retention across the global B2B fintech ecosystem. As a Staff Backend Engineer, you'll design high-performance distributed systems, develop AI-powered automation capabilities, and mentor engineering teams while balancing consumer-technology speed with the precision and regulatory complexity of global financial services. This role requires 8+ years of backend engineering expertise, deep distributed systems knowledge, and proven Staff-level technical leadership. **Role:** Staff Backend Engineer **Seniority:** Staff **Locations:** US - Seattle **Salary:** 163000–279000 USD [Apply](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/airwallex/c1ce5c89-9c88-4111-aa37-0a363d8f51c8) Canonical: https://scaleengineer.com/jobs/airwallex/staff-software-engineer-growth-c1ce5c89 --- ## Responsibilities - Drive Technical Strategy and Architecture: Define and evolve the technical architecture for critical Growth Engineering platforms that power customer acquisition, activation, conversion, retention, and expansion. Lead complex, cross-team initiatives from design through production, influencing architectural decisions across multiple engineering teams and establishing patterns that scale across the organization. - Build Scalable Backend Infrastructure: Architect and develop high-performance APIs, distributed microservices, event-driven systems, and real-time data processing pipelines that support growth automation at scale. Focus on creating foundational infrastructure that enables multiple teams to build growth capabilities without reimplementing core functionality. - Develop AI-Native Platform Capabilities: Transform customer signals, product usage, lifecycle events, and business context into personalized experiences and automated workflows. Integrate large language models, agentic workflows, and intelligent decision systems that power next-best actions, customer segmentation engines, and marketing automation capabilities within fintech regulatory constraints. - Design for Reliability and Scale: Establish strong technical foundations emphasizing performance optimization, fault tolerance, distributed system resilience, comprehensive observability, security, and operational excellence. Implement monitoring, alerting, and incident response patterns that ensure platform reliability across multiple geographic regions and time zones. - Translate Business Challenges into Technical Solutions: Partner across Product, Data Science, Marketing, Sales, and engineering teams to understand ambiguous business requirements and translate them into pragmatic technical solutions. Define measurable success metrics and ensure engineering decisions directly contribute to growth outcomes and business impact. - Elevate Engineering Excellence: Provide architectural leadership through technical mentorship, rigorous design reviews, and hands-on collaboration on complex engineering problems. Model best practices in distributed systems design, code quality, testing, and operational discipline while building a culture of continuous learning and technical rigor across the Growth Engineering organization. ## Requirements ### education - {"name":"Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or Related Field","description":"Formal education in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Mathematics, or related technical discipline providing foundation for software engineering principles and computer science theory. Equivalent professional experience in lieu of formal degree considered for exceptionally qualified candidates with 10+ years of demonstrated expertise."} ### technical - {"name":"Backend Language Proficiency","description":"Expert-level proficiency in Python, Java, Kotlin, or comparable backend languages with strong fundamentals in object-oriented design, functional programming concepts, and modern language features. Demonstrated experience with backend frameworks such as FastAPI, Spring Boot, or Django."} - {"name":"Distributed Systems Architecture","description":"Deep expertise in distributed systems design including microservices architecture, service-oriented architectures (SOA), domain-driven design (DDD), event-driven architectures, and event sourcing patterns. Strong understanding of consistency models, CAP theorem, eventual consistency, and transaction patterns in distributed environments."} - {"name":"Scalability and Performance","description":"Proven ability to design systems that handle high-traffic, high-throughput scenarios with sub-second latency requirements. Experience with database scaling strategies, caching layers, query optimization, connection pooling, and capacity planning for production systems."} - {"name":"Cloud Infrastructure and Containerization","description":"Solid understanding of cloud platforms such as AWS or GCP, containerization with Docker, and orchestration technologies including Kubernetes. Experience with infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD pipelines, monitoring, and observability tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, or Splunk."} - {"name":"Computer Science Fundamentals","description":"Strong foundation in computer science principles including data structures, algorithms, complexity analysis, system design patterns, and software engineering best practices. Ability to reason about technical tradeoffs and make sound architectural decisions based on requirements and constraints."} ### experience - {"name":"8+ Years Backend Software Engineering","description":"Substantial professional software engineering experience with significant focus on backend development. Track record of building production systems at scale, shipping features from conception through operations, and handling the full software development lifecycle."} - {"name":"Staff-Level Technical Leadership","description":"Demonstrated ability to operate at Staff level with proven track record driving complex, cross-functional engineering initiatives. Experience shaping architectural decisions that impact multiple teams, setting technical direction, and taking ownership of ambiguous problems without waiting for detailed specifications."} - {"name":"Mentorship and Team Leadership","description":"Experience mentoring junior and mid-level engineers, conducting technical interviews, and developing other engineers' capabilities. Demonstrated ability to lead through influence, communicate complex technical concepts clearly, and build consensus across distributed teams."} - {"name":"Growth Platform or Fintech Experience","description":"Preferred experience building growth platforms, customer acquisition systems, experimentation frameworks, marketing automation platforms, or data-intensive applications. Additional value from experience in fintech, payments, regulated environments, or high-growth technology companies managing complex business and compliance requirements."} ## Skills ### required - {"name":"Backend System Design","description":"Expert ability to design backend systems from scratch, considering scalability, reliability, security, and maintainability. Proficiency in API design, data modeling, and architectural patterns specific to backend systems."} - {"name":"Distributed Systems","description":"Deep understanding of distributed computing concepts, consensus algorithms, eventually-consistent systems, and patterns for building reliable systems across multiple machines and data centers."} - {"name":"Production Operations and Observability","description":"Experience designing, deploying, and operating complex systems in production. Comfort with structured logging, distributed tracing, metrics collection, alerting, and incident response. Ability to diagnose and resolve production issues efficiently."} - {"name":"Technical Leadership","description":"Ability to lead complex technical initiatives, make architectural decisions under uncertainty, communicate technical strategy, and influence without direct authority. Experience mentoring engineers and building technical culture."} - {"name":"Data-Driven Decision Making","description":"Experience defining metrics, analyzing system performance data, and making optimization decisions based on quantitative evidence. Comfort with A/B testing frameworks, experimentation systems, and measurement methodologies."} ### preferred - {"name":"AI/ML Systems Integration","description":"Experience integrating machine learning models, large language models, or AI systems into backend platforms. Understanding of model serving, inference optimization, prompt engineering, agentic workflows, and production observability for AI systems."} - {"name":"Real-Time Data Processing","description":"Experience building real-time data pipelines, streaming architectures using technologies such as Kafka, Flink, or Spark Streaming. Understanding of stream processing patterns, windowing, stateful processing, and event-driven systems."} - {"name":"Growth Platform Architecture","description":"Experience building customer segmentation engines, experimentation platforms, marketing automation systems, customer journey orchestration, or other growth technology infrastructure. Understanding of growth metrics, funnel analysis, and customer lifecycle modeling."} - {"name":"Fintech and Regulated Environments","description":"Background in fintech, payments, or other highly regulated industries. Understanding of compliance requirements, audit trails, data residency, financial transaction processing, reconciliation, and regulatory reporting."} - {"name":"Enterprise Systems Integration","description":"Experience designing integrations across product platforms, analytics systems, CRM platforms, marketing automation tools, and other enterprise systems. Understanding of data synchronization patterns, webhook architectures, and third-party API integration."} - {"name":"Performance Optimization","description":"Proven ability to identify performance bottlenecks, optimize database queries, reduce latency, improve throughput, and handle database scaling challenges. Experience with profiling tools and performance analysis techniques."} ## Tech stack ### tools - {"name":"Kubernetes","description":"Container orchestration platform for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized backend applications across distributed infrastructure."} - {"name":"Docker","description":"Containerization technology for packaging backend applications and dependencies into consistent, reproducible deployment units."} - {"name":"Prometheus","description":"Monitoring and alerting system for collecting metrics from backend systems and enabling observability and performance analysis."} - {"name":"Grafana","description":"Visualization and analytics platform for creating dashboards from backend system metrics, enabling real-time monitoring and historical analysis."} - {"name":"Splunk","description":"Enterprise logging and analytics platform for centralized log aggregation, troubleshooting, and operational intelligence from backend systems."} - {"name":"Kafka","description":"Distributed event streaming platform for building real-time data pipelines, event-driven architectures, and pub/sub messaging patterns at scale."} - {"name":"AWS","description":"Cloud infrastructure platform providing compute, storage, databases, networking, and managed services for building scalable backend systems."} - {"name":"GCP","description":"Google Cloud Platform providing infrastructure, databases, AI/ML services, and analytics capabilities for backend development."} ### others - {"name":"Event-Driven Architecture","description":"Design pattern for building systems based on event generation, detection, and consumption enabling loose coupling and asynchronous communication across services."} - {"name":"Microservices Architecture","description":"Architectural approach for building applications as collection of small, independent, loosely-coupled services enabling scalability, resilience, and independent deployment."} - {"name":"Domain-Driven Design","description":"Software design methodology focusing on modeling business domains, establishing bounded contexts, and organizing code around business concepts rather than technical layers."} - {"name":"AI/LLM Integration","description":"Experience integrating large language models, prompt engineering, prompt chaining, agentic workflows, and AI-powered features into backend systems with production considerations."} - {"name":"Experimentation and A/B Testing","description":"Knowledge of experimentation frameworks, statistical significance testing, A/B testing architectures, and multivariate testing for measuring feature impact and driving data-driven decisions."} - {"name":"CI/CD Pipelines","description":"Experience designing and implementing continuous integration and continuous deployment systems enabling rapid, safe iteration of backend services."} ### databases - {"name":"PostgreSQL","description":"Relational database management system commonly used in scalable backend architectures with support for complex queries, ACID transactions, and advanced features like JSONB."} - {"name":"Redis","description":"In-memory data structure store used for caching, session management, real-time analytics, and pub/sub messaging patterns in high-performance systems."} - {"name":"MongoDB","description":"NoSQL document database providing flexible schema for storing unstructured data and scaling horizontally across distributed systems."} - {"name":"DynamoDB","description":"AWS managed NoSQL database service providing serverless architecture, automatic scaling, and low-latency access for applications with variable workloads."} ### languages - {"name":"Python","description":"Primary backend language with expertise in modern Python frameworks such as FastAPI, Flask, Django, and async/await patterns for high-performance applications."} - {"name":"Java","description":"Enterprise backend development language with deep knowledge of Spring Boot framework, reactive programming patterns, and JVM performance tuning."} - {"name":"Kotlin","description":"JVM-based language for backend development combining modern language features with Java interoperability and Spring ecosystem integration."} ### frameworks - {"name":"FastAPI","description":"Modern Python web framework for building high-performance REST APIs with automatic documentation, async support, and type safety."} - {"name":"Spring Boot","description":"Java framework for rapid development of production-grade applications with built-in support for web services, data access, security, and operational management."} - {"name":"Django","description":"Python web framework providing batteries-included approach to backend development with ORM, admin interface, and robust ecosystem."} ## Benefits ### benefits ## Compensation - **max:** 280000 - **min:** 200000 - **currency:** USD - **stockOptions:** true ## Interview process ### steps - {"name":"Initial Screening and Discussion","description":"Conversation with recruiting team to understand your background, experience level, interest in the Growth Engineering role, and alignment with Airwallex's mission. Discussion of career goals, previous growth platform or fintech experience, and high-level technical expertise."} - {"name":"Technical Architecture Assessment","description":"Deep-dive technical interview with Engineering Manager or Staff-level engineer covering distributed systems design, backend architecture patterns, scalability thinking, and experience designing systems from first principles. Expect discussion of past complex technical challenges, design tradeoffs, and architectural decision-making."} - {"name":"System Design Deep Dive","description":"Collaborative system design session where you'll work through designing a complex growth platform component addressing customer segmentation, experimentation, or marketing automation challenges. Assessment focuses on architectural thinking, understanding of distributed systems constraints, and ability to communicate technical concepts clearly."} - {"name":"Growth and Product Acumen","description":"Conversation with Product or Growth leadership exploring your understanding of growth mechanics, measurement frameworks, experimentation, and how technical decisions impact growth outcomes. Discussion of previous growth initiatives you've built, metrics you've optimized, and cross-functional collaboration experience."} - {"name":"Staff-Level Leadership Evaluation","description":"Interview with Director-level or VP-level engineering leadership assessing technical leadership maturity, decision-making under uncertainty, mentorship philosophy, cross-team influence, and ability to operate in ambiguous environments. Exploration of strategic thinking, organizational impact, and scaling technical teams."} - {"name":"Engineering Excellence and Culture Fit","description":"Final conversation with team members exploring your approach to code quality, operational discipline, continuous learning, collaboration style, and alignment with Airwallex's operating principles emphasizing builder mentality, first-principles thinking, and high agency."} ## Full description ## **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 2,300 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](https://www.airwallex.com/en-us/operating-principles) to see it in full. ## **How you'll make impact** Growth Engineering at Airwallex is building an AI-native platform that powers customer acquisition, activation, conversion, retention, and expansion. We're developing scalable infrastructure, intelligent decision systems, and automation capabilities that connect product, sales, and marketing to drive measurable business outcomes. As a Staff Backend Engineer, you'll play a critical role in defining the technical architecture and building the foundational systems that power Growth at scale. * **Drive technical strategy and architecture** for critical Growth Engineering platforms, influencing engineering decisions across multiple teams and leading complex initiatives from design through production. * **Build scalable backend infrastructure**, including high-performance APIs, distributed services, event-driven architectures, and real-time data processing systems that power growth automation and intelligent decision-making. * **Develop AI-native platform capabilities** that transform customer signals, product usage, lifecycle events, and business context into personalized experiences, next-best actions, and automated workflows. * **Design for reliability and scale**, establishing strong foundations for performance, fault tolerance, observability, security, and operational excellence. * **Translate ambiguous business challenges into technical solutions**, partnering with Product, Data Science, Marketing, Sales, and engineering teams to deliver measurable outcomes. * **Elevate engineering excellence** through architectural leadership, technical mentorship, thoughtful design reviews, and hands-on contributions to complex engineering problems. US: You'll work from our San Francisco office three days a week. ## **What we're looking for** ### **Essentials** * **8+ years of professional software engineering experience**, with substantial experience in backend development and a bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field. * **Strong proficiency in Python, Java, Kotlin, or a comparable backend language**, with solid computer science fundamentals, object-oriented design skills, and experience with frameworks such as FastAPI or Spring Boot. * **Deep expertise in distributed systems and backend architecture**, including domain-driven design, event-driven architectures, scalability, reliability, and modern engineering practices. * **Proven Staff-level technical leadership**, with a track record of driving complex, cross-team engineering initiatives, shaping architectural decisions, and mentoring other engineers. * **Strong ownership and execution skills**, with the ability to navigate ambiguity, make pragmatic technical tradeoffs, and deliver high-quality solutions from design through production operations. ### **Preferred** * Experience building growth platforms, experimentation systems, customer segmentation engines, marketing automation, or data-intensive applications. * Experience building AI-powered applications or agentic workflows, including LLM integration, tool orchestration, evaluation, and production observability. * Experience with real-time data pipelines, streaming technologies, or large-scale event processing. * Familiarity with cloud infrastructure such as AWS or GCP, containerization, and orchestration technologies including Docker and Kubernetes. * Experience with production observability and reliability tooling such as Grafana, Prometheus, Splunk, or equivalent. * Experience designing integrations across product, analytics, CRM, marketing, or other enterprise systems. * Experience in high-growth technology companies, fintech, payments, or regulated environments. ## **You'll thrive here if** * **You have high agency.** You proactively identify high-impact opportunities, shape technical direction, and drive execution without waiting for detailed instructions. * **You think in systems.** You build reusable platforms and abstractions that enable multiple teams to move faster rather than optimizing for one-off solutions. * **You're pragmatic and outcome-oriented.** You balance long-term architectural quality with speed of delivery, and measure success by real-world impact. * **You're comfortable with ambiguity.** You make thoughtful decisions with incomplete information, validate assumptions quickly, and adapt as you learn. * **You lead through influence.** You communicate clearly, challenge ideas constructively, mentor other engineers, and build alignment across teams. * **You balance autonomy with collaboration.** You know when to make decisions independently and when broader alignment is essential. * **You thrive in a global environment.** You're comfortable collaborating across distributed teams and time zones, including APAC, EMEA, and the US. ## **Learn more about your team** Growth at Airwallex is building a unified, AI-native growth system across product, sales, and marketing. Rather than applying AI to isolated tasks, we use customer context, machine learning, automation, and continuous learning to transform how Airwallex acquires, activates, converts, retains, and expands customers. You’ll build high-traffic platforms, experimentation frameworks, and intelligent decision systems that turn signals—such as company profile, product usage, lifecycle stage, behavior, and intent—into personalized journeys, next-best actions, and measurable incremental value. The work spans both human + AI and autonomous operating models: AI-native tools that increase the leverage of growth teams, alongside agentic workflows that can research opportunities, launch and optimize campaigns, orchestrate customer journeys, and measure outcomes within clear strategies and guardrails. The challenge is to combine consumer-technology speed with the precision, trust, and regulatory complexity of global B2B finance. If you enjoy owning ambiguous problems end to end, prototyping quickly, measuring real business impact, and using every outcome to improve the next decision, you’ll help define how an AI-native global financial platform grows. ## **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_](http://airwallex.com) _email address. Please apply only through_ [_careers.airwallex.com_](http://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.