Head of Engineering, Payments Platform
About The Position
Airwallex is hiring a Head of Engineering for its Payments Platform, which turns global payment complexity into infrastructure that helps businesses accept and process money more simply. The role combines people leadership, technical direction, and delivery ownership to build and operate critical platform components. The position owns the end-to-end strategy, architecture, and roadmap for the Payments Platform, covering payment processing, routing, settlement, reconciliation, and partner integrations across global markets. It leads and develops Engineering Managers and senior technical talent across multiple squads, while fostering ownership, technical excellence, and continuous improvement. The role provides architectural direction for high-volume, mission-critical payment systems and drives standards for reliability, observability, security, scalability, and developer productivity. It also oversees concurrent initiatives, balancing near-term delivery with long-term platform investment and operational health, and partners with Product, Commercial, Risk, Compliance, and regional engineering leaders to support company growth, customer experience, and regulatory requirements.
Requirements
- 10+ years of experience in software engineering.
- 5+ years in engineering leadership roles.
- Experience in people management, including managing Engineering Managers or Engineering Leads.
- A track record of building and scaling high-performing teams.
- Strong product thinking and ability to partner closely with Product Management to define roadmaps, prioritise delivery, and drive business outcomes.
- Deep technical fluency in software architecture and system design, including guiding architectural decisions for large-scale, complex distributed systems.
- Ability to operate in fast-paced, high-growth environments that value incremental improvement, ownership, and speed of execution.
- Experience in fintech, financial services, payments, or a similarly regulated industry where correctness and data integrity are critical.
- Comfort owning the roadmap and taking initiative to address problems.
- Ability to make decisions with incomplete information and move quickly.
- Ability to collaborate with colleagues across countries and time zones, including occasional schedule flexibility.
Responsibilities
- Own the end-to-end strategy, architecture, and roadmap for the Payments Platform, covering payment processing, routing, settlement, reconciliation, and partner integrations across global markets.
- Lead and grow the engineering organisation by managing and developing Engineering Managers and senior technical talent across multiple squads.
- Build a culture of ownership, technical excellence, and continuous improvement.
- Set architectural direction and standards for reliability, observability, security, scalability, and developer productivity in high-volume, mission-critical payment systems.
- Drive execution across concurrent initiatives, balancing short-term delivery with long-term platform investments and operational health.
- Partner with Product, Commercial, Risk, Compliance, and regional engineering leaders to support growth, customer experience, and regulatory requirements.
- Work closely with people across multiple countries and time zones, flexing hours occasionally to support global collaboration.
- Own the roadmap, take responsibility for outcomes, and make decisions and move forward when information is incomplete.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Director
Education Level
No Education Listed
