Senior Software Engineer I - KYC & Onboarding

Wise; Greater London; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Wise in London is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to own large-scale backend initiatives within our KYC/Onboarding verification domain. You’ll design robust microservices, ship clean APIs, and drive scalable, compliant systems that support billions of transactions.

You’ll collaborate with product managers, designers, and other engineers, own the technical roadmap, mentor peers, and ensure high reliability and observability across the platform.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of experience working with any language and architecting scalable microservices.
• Strong product mindset with emphasis on customer experience and regulatory compliance.
• Ability to make data-driven decisions to solve complex problems.
• Exceptional communication skills for diverse audiences including product managers and engineers.
• Commitment to clean, testable, maintainable, and high-performance code with strong code reviews.
• Proven ability to deliver large-scale technical projects.
• Extensive experience with relational and non-relational databases and data lifecycle management.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical roadmap for your areas of ownership, focusing on debt, reliability, scalability, and security.
• Design and implement robust backend systems with clean APIs to hide internal complexity.
• Drive integration with risk and mitigation systems to ensure regulatory compliance.
• Identify and lead technical delivery of large-scale, cross-team initiatives.
• Collaborate with product, design, and data teams to deliver impactful solutions.

Skills

Microservices architecture

Kafka/RabbitMQ

Data-driven decisions

Regulatory compliance

Communication skills

Technical leadership

Backend development

Tools

Kafka

RabbitMQ

Job description

We are the Global KYC and Onboarding squad in the Servicing department and we have a mission: to enable teams at Wise to expand and fine-tune the business in a "config change" manner all across the globe, while remaining compliant and safe for the customers. There are three teams in the squad: Business Onboarding Verification, Personal Onboarding Verification and Wise Platform Verification (our B2B platform).

The scale we operate at: In FY2025, 15.6 million people and businesses used Wise, we onboarded over 5.9 million new customers (~500k/month), and moved £145.2bn across borders (~£400m/day) across 160+ countries and 40+ currencies. Our verification systems aren't supporting tools — they're core production infrastructure that protects customers, enables growth, and must stay reliable under constant change in regulations, policies, and evolving threat patterns.

All of the teams are diverse, cross‑functional groups passionate about solving complex problems with elegant solutions. We bring together backend and frontend engineers, mobile developers, designers, data analysts, and product managers who collaborate closely to deliver exceptional customer experiences. Our teams are responsible for the critical verification journeys that business and personal customers complete before using Wise's products. We own the entire verification lifecycle – from document collection flows and automated review systems to agent tooling and compliance monitoring. We operate with high ownership in a bottom‑up, transparent culture, make data‑driven decisions, and celebrate both technical excellence and customer impact. Right now we're focused on building KYC/FinCrime as a configuration‑driven product, refactoring and building new scalable microservice systems, and increasing automation using ML/AI where it genuinely improves decisioning, review quality, and operational efficiency — with safe fallbacks and clear observability. As a team that touches both regulatory requirements and customer experience, we have unique opportunities to innovate in a space traditionally resistant to change.

By joining one of our teams, you'll directly impact these customers by transforming a traditionally frustrating experience into one that's fast, intuitive, and fair. Your code will help individuals and small businesses access global banking faster, enable entrepreneurs to pay international employees on time, and allow people like you and your teammates support their families across borders without friction. We're not just building verification systems – we're removing barriers that stand between our customers and their financial freedom.

We need like‑minded engineers in all the teams in the squad, so we'll use the interview process to discover where your unique skills shine brightest. Ultimately, we want to match you with the team that perfectly aligns with your experience and sets you up for success!

As a Senior Software Engineer, you will own large‑sized, impactful projects within the domain. Your responsibilities span end‑to‑end:

• You will own the technical roadmap for your areas of ownership, ensuring they address important technical debt, reliability, scalability, and security concerns.
• You will be instrumental in designing and implementing robust backend systems that provide clean APIs and interfaces to hide the internal complexity.
• You will drive the integration with various risk and mitigation systems to ensure that Wise is compliant.
• You will take initiative to identify and solve impactful problems both within your team and beyond, contributing to high‑impact cross‑team initiatives.

What we expect from you:

• You have 4+ years of experience working with any language, asynchronous message queues (e.g., Kafka, RabbitMQ), and have architected and built highly scalable microservices.
• A strong product mindset and a deep passion for both customer experience and regulatory compliance.
• You will prioritize work with a holistic view of the customer and business impact, making data‑driven decisions to solve complex, ambiguous problems.
• Exceptional communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical and architectural concepts clearly to diverse audiences, including product managers, designers, and other engineering teams.
• You demonstrate a commitment to writing clean, testable, maintainable, and highly performant code, and you are a strong advocate for best coding practices and rigorous code reviews.
• Proven ability to identify and lead the technical delivery of large‑scale, organisationally‑complex projects, adept
• Extensive experience working with relational and non‑relational databases, including advanced query optimization, schema design, and data lifecycle management for sensitive information.

What does success look like?

• You’ll have deeply embedded yourself within our mission, owning and delivering quarterly goals for the team, significantly impacting our ability to scale and improving verification processes.
• You’ll own the technical roadmap for your areas, ensuring it supports both immediate delivery needs and long‑term strategic objectives, including addressing technical debt and improving system health.
• You’ll leverage your expertise to identify the right solutions to solve ambiguous, open‑ended problems, driving tough prioritization decisions that deliver clear business and customer value.
• You’ll consistently define and implement technical solutions or efficient operational processes that level up your team and contribute beyond it, mentoring other engineers and sharing best practices.
• You’ll inspire a high‑performing team environment where ideas are shared, technical excellence is pursued, and continuous learning is embraced.