Engineering Director, Payments Platform

About the role

Airwallex is the AI-native financial operating system used by more than 675,000 businesses worldwide, and its Payments Platform turns global payment complexity into infrastructure that helps businesses accept and process money. As Engineering Director, you will combine people leadership, technical direction and delivery ownership to build and operate critical parts of the platform.

Key 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 a high-performing engineering organisation by managing and developing Engineering Managers and senior technical talent across multiple squads, and building a culture of ownership, technical excellence and continuous improvement.
• Provide architectural direction for high-volume, mission-critical payment systems, setting standards for reliability, observability, security, scalability and developer productivity.
• Drive execution across multiple concurrent initiatives, balancing short-term delivery with long-term platform investments and operational health.
• Partner with Product, Commercial, Risk, Compliance and regional engineering leaders so that platform capabilities support growth, customer experience and regulatory requirements.

Required profile

• 10+ years of experience in software engineering, with 5+ years in engineering leadership roles.
• Demonstrated experience managing Engineering Managers or Engineering Leads, with a track record of building and scaling high-performing teams.
• Strong product thinking and close partnership with Product Management to define roadmaps, prioritise delivery and drive business outcomes.
• Experience in fintech, financial services, payments or another highly regulated industry.
• Comfortable owning the roadmap and making decisions with incomplete information, and able to work with colleagues across multiple countries and time zones.

Required skills

• Deep technical fluency in software architecture and system design, guiding architectural decisions for large-scale, complex distributed systems.
• Proven ability to operate in fast-paced, high-growth environments.