Lead Engineer — AI-Driven FinTech Platform

Klarna; Milano; Hybrid; EUR 120,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Klarna is seeking a Lead Engineer in Milan to own and evolve critical payment systems. You will write and review code, shape architecture, and work hands-on in Java, JavaScript, or Python.

You’ll mentor peers, align technical decisions with business goals, and navigate the challenges of operating in a regulated banking context. You will join a hands-on team that values practical impact, cross-team collaboration, and continuous improvement.

Qualifications

• Experience designing reliable and scalable distributed systems.
• Ability to mentor engineers and raise the technical bar across teams.
• Ability to balance engineering trade-offs with business outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Make sound, defensible technical decisions and document rationale.
• Consider wider architecture, failure propagation, and how changes impact users.
• Tie technical choices to business outcomes and scale the solution to value.
• Design for regulatory constraints, reliability and auditability in banking contexts.
• Mentor engineers and elevate teams through collaboration and code quality.
• Define how AI is used in daily engineering practice, not just demos.

Skills

System design

Mentoring

Scalability under load

Cross-team collaboration

Communication

Tools

Java

JavaScript

Python

Job description

Klarna is seeking a Lead Engineer in Milan to own and evolve critical payment systems. You will write and review code, shape architecture, and work hands-on in Java, JavaScript, or Python.

You’ll mentor peers, align technical decisions with business goals, and navigate the challenges of operating in a regulated banking context. You will join a hands-on team that values practical impact, cross-team collaboration, and continuous improvement.