Lead Payments Engineer

Mentor Talent Acquisition; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 117,000 - 143,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Meals provided

Travel home covered on late nights

Visa sponsorship

Birthday off

Unlimited paid sick leave

Global health insurance

Job summary

Mentor Talent Acquisition is seeking a Lead Payments Engineer to own the technical direction of a high-scale payments platform in a fintech environment. You will design core components, integrate new banking partners, and influence architecture and security decisions.

You will lead a small senior team, reporting to Head of Engineering, and work in a fast-paced startup culture with hybrid London-based office presence and visa sponsorship for exceptional candidates.

Qualifications

• Experience building payments systems in fintech, banking infrastructure or crypto.
• Visible go-to person on a fintech startup/scale-up team.
• Strong distributed systems and high-availability design.
• Production experience with event-driven systems, in Go or keen to work in it.
• Comfort in a fast startup environment and owning outcomes end-to-end.
• Clear communication and knowledge sharing.
• Banking-as-a-Service or core banking integrations.
• Digital wallets, identity or fraud detection.
• PCI-DSS and AML/KYC experience.
• Temporal or similar workflow orchestration.

Responsibilities

• Design and build core components of a high-scale, low-latency payments platform.
• Integrate new banking partners and payment providers across multiple rails.
• Work across FX, peer-to-peer and internal flow-of-funds services.
• Help launch new products, including stablecoin and card offerings.
• Lead technical decisions on architecture, scalability, security and reliability.
• Build fraud prevention, detection and mitigation controls.
• Set the bar for engineering standards: testing, monitoring and continuous deployment.
• Partner with product, compliance and infrastructure to ship end to end.

Skills

Real-time payments

Fintech/Baking infra

Distributed systems

Security in payments

Event-driven systems (Go)

High-availability design

Communication

Banking-as-a-Service / core banking

Identity/Fraud detection

PCI-DSS & AML/KYC

Temporal/workflow orchestration

Go programming

Tools

Go

Job description

I’m working with a fast-growing, well-funded fintech that is re-architecting the payments service at the heart of its platform, which will process billions of dollars every month. They’re looking for a Lead Payments Engineer to own the technical direction.

This is a small, senior team where your decisions ship. You’ll report directly to the Head of Engineering and work alongside an existing payments engineer. About 80% of the company are engineers, the structure is flat, and leadership goes to people who take initiative and deliver.

What you’ll do

• Design and build core components of a high-scale, low-latency payments platform
• Integrate new banking partners and payment providers across multiple rails
• Work across FX, peer-to-peer and internal flow-of-funds services
• Help launch new products, including stablecoin and card offerings
• Lead technical decisions on architecture, scalability, security and reliability
• Build fraud prevention, detection and mitigation controls
• Set the bar for engineering standards: testing, monitoring and continuous deployment
• Partner with product, compliance and infrastructure to ship end to end

What you’ll bring

• Experience building payments systems in fintech, banking infrastructure or crypto. You know how money moves in real time and what breaks when it doesn’t.
• A background at a fintech startup or scale-up, where you were the visible go-to person on your team
• Strong distributed systems, secure transaction processing and high-availability design
• Production experience with event-driven systems, in Go or keen to work in it
• Comfort in a fast, sometimes hectic startup environment, and a taste for owning outcomes end to end
• Clear communication and a habit of sharing knowledge
• Banking-as-a-Service or core banking integrations
• Digital wallets, identity or fraud detection
• PCI-DSS and AML/KYC experience
• Temporal or similar workflow orchestration

The package

• Up to £130k base plus stock options
• Hybrid in Central London: 2 days a week in office, with most of the team in Tuesday to Thursday
• Fully remote considered for exceptional candidates
• Visa sponsorship available for those relocating to the UK
• 25 days’ holiday plus bank holidays and your birthday off
• Global health insurance and unlimited paid sick leave
• Meals provided and travel home covered on late nights