# Staff Software Engineer, Payments **Company:** [Airwallex](https://scaleengineer.com/companies/airwallex) Staff Software Engineer, Payments at Airwallex is a senior technical leadership role focused on architecting and evolving next-generation payment acceptance infrastructure. You'll design and build scalable backend services, REST APIs, and event-driven systems within a microservices architecture while leading complex initiatives across payment gateways, acquiring, issuing, and local payment methods. This position requires 10+ years of software engineering experience with proven expertise in high-volume distributed systems, backend microservices, and preferably payments or fintech domain knowledge. **Role:** Staff Engineer **Seniority:** Staff **Locations:** NL - Amsterdam **Salary:** 180000–240000 USD [Apply](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/airwallex/ba58b0a7-b823-455c-9e63-0f3baec56c81) Canonical: https://scaleengineer.com/jobs/airwallex/staff-software-engineer-payments --- ## Responsibilities - Architecture Leadership for Payment Acceptance Infrastructure: Lead the architecture and evolution of next-generation Payment Acceptance infrastructure, defining technical direction and making complex architectural decisions that support Airwallex's mission to serve 250,000+ global businesses with integrated payments solutions. - Scalable Backend Services and Microservices Design: Design and build scalable backend services, REST APIs, event-driven systems, and integration components within a microservices architecture. Develop REST services connecting with React frontends while maintaining high reliability and performance standards. - Cross-Domain Payment Systems Development: Drive complex initiatives across payment gateways, acquiring platforms, issuing platforms, card networks, and local payment methods. Translate merchant needs into technical solutions that directly impact merchant experience and business outcomes. - Cross-Team Collaboration and Stakeholder Management: Partner with product, business, infrastructure, and external engineering teams to ensure technical solutions align with business objectives. Influence and communicate effectively across engineering, product, and business stakeholders. - Technical Excellence and System Reliability: Conduct architectural reviews, address technical debt, and improve system reliability, scalability, and operational effectiveness. Ensure distributed payment systems maintain high availability and performance under high-volume transaction loads. - Engineering Culture and Mentorship: Raise the engineering bar through strong design practices, code quality standards, comprehensive testing, advanced observability practices, and mentorship of senior engineers. Lead cross-team technical initiatives to elevate engineering standards across the Payments organization. ## Requirements ### education - {"name":"Computer Science or Related Field","description":"Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, or equivalent professional experience. Strong foundation in computer science fundamentals, algorithms, and system design."} ### technical - {"name":"Hands-on Backend Development","description":"Recent hands-on experience with Java or Kotlin and Spring/Spring Boot frameworks. Demonstrated ability to write production-quality backend code while maintaining architectural oversight."} - {"name":"Distributed Systems Design and Operation","description":"Strong experience designing and operating high-volume distributed systems. Proven capability to build resilient systems handling millions of transactions with focus on consistency, availability, and partition tolerance."} - {"name":"REST APIs and Event-Driven Architecture","description":"Expertise building REST APIs, backend microservices, and Kafka-based event streams. Experience designing event-driven systems for scalability and decoupling of payment processing components."} - {"name":"Distributed Data Store Expertise","description":"Proficiency with distributed data stores such as Cassandra, Hazelcast, Oracle Coherence, or similar technologies. Understanding of consistency models, partitioning strategies, and eventual consistency patterns in payment systems."} - {"name":"Cloud Infrastructure and Containerization","description":"Production experience with cloud platforms such as GCP or AWS. Hands-on expertise with Docker and Kubernetes for containerization and orchestration of microservices at scale."} - {"name":"Observability and Operational Tooling","description":"Strong familiarity with observability and operational tooling such as New Relic, StatsD, ELK, Datadog, Prometheus, or similar. Capability to implement comprehensive monitoring, logging, and alerting for production systems."} ### experience - {"name":"Senior Technical Leadership","description":"10+ years of software engineering experience, including Staff-level technical leadership or equivalent ownership of complex backend systems. Demonstrated success leading architectural initiatives and mentoring senior engineers."} - {"name":"High-Volume Transaction Systems","description":"Proven experience designing and operating high-volume distributed systems in payments, fintech, commerce, or financial infrastructure. Track record of building systems handling millions of daily transactions with high reliability."} - {"name":"Full Project Lifecycle Ownership","description":"Proven ability to lead projects from concept to production with a focus on quality, testing, reliability, and maintainability. Experience taking ownership of complex initiatives from architecture through production deployment and ongoing optimization."} - {"name":"Payments Domain Expertise","description":"Preferred experience building payment gateways, acquiring platforms, issuing platforms, or payment acceptance infrastructure. Familiarity with card network integrations (Visa, Mastercard) and local payment methods (iDEAL, Klarna, Trustly)."} - {"name":"Payment Processing Workflows","description":"Knowledge of authorization, capture, refunds, chargebacks, settlement, reconciliation, fraud, risk, or PCI/compliance workflows. Understanding of payment processing flows and regulatory requirements in financial infrastructure."} ## Skills ### required - {"name":"Java or Kotlin","description":"Production-level expertise in Java or Kotlin for building robust backend systems. Recent hands-on coding experience with these languages in distributed system contexts."} - {"name":"Spring Boot Framework","description":"Deep expertise with Spring Boot for rapid development of microservices and REST APIs. Knowledge of Spring ecosystem including Spring Cloud, Spring Data, and Spring Integration."} - {"name":"Microservices Architecture","description":"Proven design and implementation experience with microservices-based distributed systems. Understanding of service boundaries, API design, inter-service communication, and distributed transaction patterns."} - {"name":"Event Streaming and Kafka","description":"Production experience with Apache Kafka or similar event streaming platforms. Expertise in designing event-driven architectures for asynchronous processing and system decoupling."} - {"name":"REST API Design","description":"Expertise designing and building scalable REST APIs. Knowledge of API versioning, rate limiting, authentication, and best practices for production API governance."} - {"name":"Database Design and Optimization","description":"Strong expertise with distributed databases such as Cassandra, PostgreSQL, or similar. Experience with database optimization, indexing strategies, and query performance tuning for high-volume transactions."} - {"name":"Cloud Platform Operations","description":"Production experience with AWS or GCP. Understanding of cloud-native services, autoscaling, networking, security, and cost optimization in cloud environments."} - {"name":"Docker and Kubernetes","description":"Hands-on experience containerizing applications with Docker and orchestrating with Kubernetes. Knowledge of containerization best practices and Kubernetes operations in production environments."} - {"name":"Observability and Monitoring","description":"Advanced understanding of observability practices including structured logging, metrics collection, and distributed tracing. Experience with monitoring platforms like Datadog, Prometheus, or New Relic."} - {"name":"System Design and Architecture","description":"Expert-level system design skills with ability to architect complex, scalable solutions. Experience designing systems for high availability, fault tolerance, and handling millions of requests per second."} - {"name":"Technical Leadership","description":"Demonstrated ability to lead technical initiatives, influence architectural decisions, and mentor senior engineers. Strong communication skills for explaining complex technical concepts to diverse stakeholders."} ### preferred - {"name":"Payment Systems Architecture","description":"Hands-on experience building payment gateways, acquiring systems, or issuing platforms. Familiarity with payment processing workflows and payment system architecture patterns."} - {"name":"Card Network Integration","description":"Experience integrating with major card networks such as Visa and Mastercard. Knowledge of card network protocols, authorization flows, and compliance requirements."} - {"name":"Local Payment Methods","description":"Experience implementing integrations with local payment methods such as iDEAL, Klarna, Trustly, or similar regional payment solutions. Understanding of diverse payment ecosystems."} - {"name":"Financial Compliance and Security","description":"Familiarity with PCI-DSS compliance, fraud prevention, risk management, and financial security best practices. Understanding of regulatory requirements in payments and financial infrastructure."} - {"name":"Fintech Domain Knowledge","description":"Background in fintech, financial services, or payments industry. Understanding of business models, market dynamics, and unique technical challenges in financial technology."} - {"name":"Cross-Team Technical Initiative Leadership","description":"Proven track record mentoring senior engineers and leading complex cross-team technical initiatives. Experience driving cultural improvements in engineering practices and standards."} - {"name":"AI and Machine Learning Applications","description":"Experience leveraging AI to solve engineering problems and optimize development workflows. Understanding of how AI can be applied to payment systems for fraud detection or anomaly detection."} ## Tech stack ### tools - {"name":"Datadog","description":"Comprehensive observability platform for monitoring, logging, and alerting on payment system health and performance."} - {"name":"Prometheus","description":"Open-source monitoring and alerting toolkit for collecting and analyzing metrics from payment services."} - {"name":"New Relic","description":"Application performance monitoring (APM) platform for real-time insights into payment system performance and user experience."} - {"name":"ELK Stack","description":"Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana for centralized logging, search, and visualization of payment system logs."} - {"name":"Docker","description":"Containerization platform for packaging and deploying microservices in consistent environments."} - {"name":"Kubernetes","description":"Container orchestration platform for managing, scaling, and maintaining payment microservices in production."} - {"name":"Git","description":"Version control system for managing codebase and enabling collaborative development workflows."} - {"name":"Jenkins or GitLab CI/CD","description":"Continuous integration and continuous deployment pipelines for automating testing and deployment of payment services."} ### others - {"name":"AWS","description":"Cloud infrastructure platform hosting Airwallex's global payment systems with services like EC2, RDS, S3, and Lambda."} - {"name":"Google Cloud Platform (GCP)","description":"Alternative cloud platform offering compute, storage, and networking services for Airwallex infrastructure."} - {"name":"Microservices Architecture Patterns","description":"Design patterns for distributed systems including service-to-service communication, API gateways, and distributed transaction management."} - {"name":"REST API Standards","description":"RESTful architecture principles and HTTP standards for designing scalable and interoperable payment APIs."} - {"name":"Payment Processing Protocols","description":"Industry standards and protocols for payment processing, including card network protocols and local payment method specifications."} - {"name":"Security and Encryption","description":"Cryptographic principles, encryption standards, and security best practices for protecting sensitive payment data and PCI-DSS compliance."} ### databases - {"name":"Cassandra","description":"Distributed NoSQL database for handling high-volume payment transaction data with high availability and horizontal scalability."} - {"name":"PostgreSQL","description":"Relational database used for payment system state, transactions, and financial records requiring ACID compliance."} - {"name":"Oracle Coherence","description":"In-memory distributed data store for caching and fast access to critical payment processing data."} - {"name":"Hazelcast","description":"Open-source in-memory data grid for distributed caching and computation in high-volume payment processing."} ### languages - {"name":"Java","description":"Primary backend language for building microservices and REST APIs within Airwallex's Payments platform."} - {"name":"Kotlin","description":"Alternative JVM language supported by Spring Boot for modern backend development with enhanced expressiveness."} ### frameworks - {"name":"Spring Boot","description":"Core framework for rapid development of production-grade microservices and REST APIs in the Payments architecture."} - {"name":"Spring Cloud","description":"Used for implementing distributed system patterns, service discovery, configuration management, and circuit breaking in microservices architecture."} - {"name":"Spring Data","description":"Abstraction layer for data access in microservices, supporting multiple data stores and simplifying database interactions."} - {"name":"Apache Kafka","description":"Event streaming platform for building event-driven systems and asynchronous processing within payment workflows."} ## Benefits ### benefits - {"name":"Competitive Equity Compensation","description":"Stock options and equity participation allowing you to share in Airwallex's success as a valued member of the $11B-valued organization."} - {"name":"Global Career Growth","description":"Opportunities to develop your career across Airwallex's 27 offices worldwide, working with over 2,300 talented engineers and gaining international fintech experience."} - {"name":"High-Impact Technical Work","description":"Lead architecture decisions for payment systems serving 250,000+ businesses globally, including industry leaders like Brex, Navan, Qantas, and SHEIN."} - {"name":"Mentorship and Technical Leadership","description":"Opportunities to mentor senior engineers, lead cross-team technical initiatives, and raise engineering standards across the organization."} - {"name":"Founder-like Ownership Culture","description":"Work in an environment valuing builder mentality, fast execution with good judgment, and end-to-end project ownership from concept to production."} - {"name":"Complex Problem-Solving","description":"Tackle high-visibility technical challenges in distributed systems, payment infrastructure, and financial technology at global scale."} - {"name":"AI-Enabled Workflows","description":"Leverage AI tools to work smarter and solve engineering problems faster, staying at the forefront of technology adoption."} - {"name":"Collaborative Team Environment","description":"Join a team of 2,300+ bright and innovative tech professionals with a culture emphasizing collaboration, continuous learning, and zero-to-one innovation."} ## Compensation - **max:** 240000 - **min:** 180000 - **currency:** USD - **stockOptions:** true ## Interview process ### steps ## Full description ## **About Airwallex** Airwallex is the only unified payments and financial platform for global businesses. Powered by our unique combination of proprietary infrastructure and software, we empower over 250,000 businesses worldwide – including Brex, Navan, Qantas, SHEIN and many more – with fully integrated solutions to manage everything from business accounts, payments, spend management and treasury, to embedded finance at a global scale. Proudly founded in Melbourne, we have a team of over 2,300 of the brightest and most innovative people in tech across 27 offices around the globe. Valued at US$11 billion and backed by world-leading investors including T. Rowe Price, Visa, Mastercard, Robinhood Ventures, Sequoia, Salesforce Ventures, DST Global, and Lone Pine Capital, Airwallex is leading the charge in building the global payments and financial platform of the future. If you’re ready to do the most ambitious work of your career, join us. ## **Attributes We Value** We hire successful builders with founder-like energy who want real impact, accelerated learning, and true ownership. You bring strong role-related expertise and sharp thinking, and you’re motivated by our mission and [operating principles](https://www.airwallex.com/us/operating-principles). You move fast with good judgment, dig deep with curiosity, and make decisions from first principles, balancing speed and rigor. You're humble and collaborative; turn zero‑to‑one ideas into real products, and you “get stuff done” end-to-end. You use AI to work smarter and solve problems faster. Here, you’ll tackle complex, high‑visibility problems with exceptional teammates and grow your career as we build the future of global banking. If that sounds like you, let’s build what’s next. **About the team** In our Payments Team, your responsibilities extend beyond delivering product features to achieving business outcomes. Your tasks will involve developing various REST services and integration components within a backend microservices architecture, connecting with our React frontend. We’re looking for a Staff Software Engineer to help define the technical direction of our Payments platform, lead complex architecture decisions, and build highly reliable, high-volume distributed systems that directly impact merchant experience and business outcomes. ### **What You’ll Do** * Lead the architecture and evolution of next-generation Payment Acceptance infrastructure. * Design and build scalable backend services, REST APIs, event-driven systems, and integration components within a microservices architecture. * Drive complex initiatives across payment gateways, acquiring, issuing, card networks, and local payment methods. * Partner with product, business, infrastructure, and external engineering teams to translate merchant needs into technical solutions. * Conduct architectural reviews, address technical debt, and improve system reliability, scalability, and operational effectiveness. * Raise the engineering bar through strong design practices, code quality, testing, observability, and mentorship. ### **Minimum Qualifications** * 10+ years of software engineering experience, including Staff-level technical leadership or equivalent ownership of complex backend systems. * Strong experience designing and operating high-volume distributed systems, preferably in payments, fintech, commerce, or financial infrastructure. * Recent hands-on experience with Java or Kotlin and Spring / Spring Boot. * Expertise building REST APIs, backend microservices, Kafka-based event streams, and distributed data stores such as Cassandra, Hazelcast, Oracle Coherence, or similar. * Experience with cloud platforms such as GCP or AWS, plus Docker and Kubernetes. * Strong familiarity with observability and operational tooling such as New Relic, StatsD, ELK, Datadog, Prometheus, or similar. * Proven ability to lead projects from concept to production with a focus on quality, testing, reliability, and maintainability. * Excellent communication skills and ability to influence across engineering, product, and business stakeholders. ### **Preferred Qualifications** * Experience building payment gateways, acquiring platforms, issuing platforms, or payment acceptance infrastructure. * Experience integrating major card networks such as Visa and Mastercard. * Experience with local payment methods such as iDEAL, Klarna, Trustly, or similar. * Familiarity with authorization, capture, refunds, chargebacks, settlement, reconciliation, fraud, risk, or PCI/compliance workflows. * Experience mentoring senior engineers and leading cross-team technical initiatives. ## **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.