Engineering Director, Payments Platform

About the role

Airwallex is building the unified payments and financial platform for global businesses, processing billions in transactions annually with a focus on reliability, scalability, and seamless cross-border experiences. As Engineering Director, Payments Platform, you will own the end-to-end strategy, architecture, and delivery of critical payment infrastructure components such as processing, routing, settlement, and partner integrations across global markets. You will lead and develop high-performing engineering teams, fostering a culture of ownership, technical excellence, and continuous improvement while balancing speed with rigorous operational standards. This role demands a founder-like mindset where you leverage AI to work smarter, solve complex problems with exceptional teammates, and turn zero-to-one ideas into real products that drive measurable business impact. You will be accountable for delivering high-visibility outcomes that directly influence customer conversion and trust, ensuring the platform remains resilient, secure, and performant at scale. If you are motivated by ambitious infrastructure work that powers global commerce and you thrive in fast-paced, cross-functional environments, this role offers the opportunity to shape the future of global banking.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Define and execute the Payments Platform vision by owning the end-to-end strategy, architecture, and roadmap for payment processing, routing, settlement, reconciliation, and partner integrations to ensure scalable and reliable operations across global markets.
• Lead, coach, and grow a world-class engineering organization by managing Engineering Managers and senior technical talent across multiple squads, building a culture of ownership, technical excellence, and continuous improvement while driving sustainable hiring and team growth.
• Drive technical architecture and platform excellence by providing architectural direction for high-volume, mission-critical payment systems and setting high standards for reliability, observability, security, scalability, and developer productivity across the platform.
• Deliver with speed and operational rigor by setting clear OKRs, managing execution across multiple concurrent initiatives, and holding teams accountable for high-quality outcomes while balancing short-term delivery with long-term platform investments and operational health.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with Product, Commercial, Risk, Compliance, and regional engineering leaders to ensure platform capabilities directly support business growth, customer experience, and regulatory requirements in all operating markets.
• Partner closely with product and commercial stakeholders to translate business requirements into robust technical solutions, ensuring payment experiences are reliable, scalable, and easy to use for businesses around the world.
• Champion best practices in observability, monitoring, and incident response to minimize downtime and maintain trust, using data-driven insights to guide improvements and prevent recurring issues.
• Guide teams in building secure, compliant, and maintainable systems that meet evolving regulatory standards and support Airwallex's global expansion into new markets and partnerships.
• Mentor and develop leaders within the engineering organization, providing feedback, career guidance, and growth opportunities that enable teams to perform at the highest level.
• Own the end-to-end delivery of critical platform components, coordinating dependencies across teams and ensuring alignment with company objectives and timelines.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in software engineering, with 5+ years in engineering leadership roles managing teams of engineers.
• Demonstrated experience in people management, including managing Engineering Managers or Engineers who manage direct reports.
• Deep technical expertise in building and operating high-scale distributed systems, with a strong understanding of reliability, scalability, and performance optimization.
• Extensive experience with payment systems, transaction processing, financial reconciliation, and settlement workflows in regulated environments.
• Strong knowledge of API design, event-driven architectures, and integration patterns for connecting with external partners and financial networks.
• Proven ability to set technical direction, make informed trade-offs, and drive architecture decisions that balance speed, quality, and long-term maintainability.
• Experience working in fast-paced, ambiguous environments where requirements evolve and clear prioritization is essential.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills to influence stakeholders, align cross-functional teams, and articulate technical concepts to non-technical audiences.
• Commitment to building inclusive, high-performing teams through coaching, feedback, and a focus on psychological safety and operational excellence.
• Willingness to travel occasionally within Singapore and across Airwallex offices for collaboration, strategic discussions, and team engagements.

Nice to have

• Experience with AI-assisted development tools and workflows to improve engineering productivity and decision-making.
• Background in embedded finance or partnerships with commercial platforms enabling business customers to embed payments into their products.
• Familiarity with financial services regulatory landscapes across key global markets and compliance-driven product development.

Practical notes

This role may require travel within Singapore and to other Airwallex offices for work-related purposes, including meetings, planning sessions, and team collaborations. Employment is full-time, and successful candidates must be eligible to work in the country of assignment. This job description is intended solely to outline the role as described in the source material and does not imply any additional benefits, compensation terms, or incentives beyond those documented.