Principal Engineer - UPOS & DA Application Portfolio

About the role

The NETS Group, a payments services group behind Singapore's national debit scheme, is looking for a Principal Engineer to act as the application development and delivery lead and senior technical authority for its UPOS & DA application portfolio. The role defines the target architecture, engineering strategy, technology standards and modernization roadmap for mission-critical digital payment platforms and Java-based backend applications, and guides a technical team in delivering secure, scalable, high-performance and highly available payment solutions.

Key responsibilities

• Define and govern the application architecture, engineering roadmap, technology standards and modernization strategy for the UPOS & DA portfolio.
• Act as technical design authority for high-risk initiatives covering payment authorization, transaction processing, switching, settlement, reconciliation, onboarding, API integration and payment gateway services.
• Lead architecture and engineering decisions for Java and Spring Boot applications, RESTful APIs, Solace JMS, databases, Linux or RHEL platforms, containers, cloud services and payment-system integrations.
• Drive multi-year transformation plans covering legacy modernization, cloud adoption, observability, automation and operational resilience.
• Review and approve major solution designs, integration patterns, data models, security controls, source code and implementation approaches.
• Oversee projects and change requests, prioritizing resources and managing technical risk across concurrent tracks.
• Enforce engineering standards through architecture, design, code review and delivery assurance processes.
• Represent the portfolio in senior management and governance forums and mentor senior engineers.

Required profile

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Software Engineering or a related field.
• At least 10 years of progressive technology experience, including as a Principal Engineer, Solution Architect, Engineering Lead or Manager.
• Proven experience leading large-scale software development, modernization or transformation programmes across teams, vendors and concurrent tracks.
• Deep expertise in enterprise application and integration architecture, and a proven track record in building secure, low-latency, high-throughput transaction processing systems.
• Strong knowledge of digital-payment ecosystems such as transaction switching, retail POS, e-commerce, QR payments, card schemes and international card integration.

Required skills

• Java and Spring Boot, RESTful APIs, Solace JMS, Linux or RHEL, containers and cloud technologies (AWS, Azure or GCP).
• PCI-DSS compliance, secure software engineering, data encryption, tokenization and access control.
• Mobile app and SDK development experience is advantageous.