Software Engineer, Payments Product Lead

Aptos • Palo Alto, CA

1d

About The Position

Aptos is a high-performance Layer 1 blockchain designed for financial services, offering sub-second settlement at sub-cent costs, production reliability for institutional use, and native stablecoins. The company is consolidating its commercial efforts into a single financial services entity focused on payments, tokenization, and trading. Payments is the first chartered business within this entity, operating as a ring-fenced unit with its own P&L, a signed global settlement partnership, and existing first-party products. This role is the founding technical leader for this payments unit, responsible for defining the business through engineering efforts.

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience building payment infrastructure at production scale, including cross-border rails, on/off-ramps, virtual accounts, and reconciliation.
• Hands-on experience with chain-native settlement, including stablecoin rails, ramp integrations, and wallet infrastructure.
• Strong engineering judgment on any technology stack.
• Front-facing gravitas to be a peer to banks, issuers, and regulated partners.
• Experience leading external technical relationships.
• Product engineer's instincts, building from client and partner needs.
• Ability to ship code and hire individuals with expertise in specific areas.
• Experience with Move or Rust is a plus.

Nice To Haves

• APAC corridor experience, including e-wallet ecosystems, QR rails, and regional licensing landscapes.
• Fluency in FX and market structure to collaborate with the trading team on RFQ integration.
• Working familiarity with payments regulation (e.g., money transmission, MiCA, Singapore PS Act).
• Prior experience in a 0→1 role, such as founding engineer, first technical hire, or product owner from inception to revenue.

Responsibilities

• Spec, ship, and run the Aptos Payment API, integrating partner infrastructure and developing an orchestration engine.
• Serve as the partner-facing engineering lead, managing requirements intake, integration, and technical diligence with financial institutions.
• Develop and manage the trust infrastructure, including revenue attribution, reconciliation, KYC/KYB integration, a testnet sandbox, and native-asset-only settlement.
• Oversee the integration with the trading stack, managing payments aspects of the seam, routing FX, and defining API contracts.
• Hire and lead the initial engineering team, making build-vs-buy decisions for components like orchestration and KYC tooling.
• Publish the Payment API v1 spec and ship the testnet sandbox within the first 90 days.
• Stand up revenue attribution v1 and harden settlement rails to production grade within the first 90 days.
• Ship the first client integration hands-on, end to end, within the first 90 days.
• Draft the orchestration build-vs-buy memo within the first 90 days.

Benefits

• 100% insurance premium coverage for medical, dental, and vision for employees and dependents (US Employees)
• Equipment of your choice
• Flexible vacation time
• 11 holidays
• Floating company days off
• Competitive Salary
• Protocol Token Grants
• 401k matching (US Employees)
• Fun and inclusive in-person and digital events

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed