Principal Engineer

NETWORK FOR ELECTRONIC TRANSFERS (SINGAPORE) PTE LTD; Singapore; On-site; SGD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

NETWORK FOR ELECTRONIC TRANSFERS (SINGAPORE) PTE LTD seeks a Principal Engineer to lead application development and delivery for the UPOS & DA portfolio. You will define target architecture, engineering strategy, and modernization plans while guiding a senior technical team to deliver secure, scalable payment solutions.

You will translate complex requirements into technical strategies, collaborate with product, security, infrastructure, and operations teams, and drive major solution decisions

Responsibilities

• Define and govern target architecture, roadmap, standards, and modernization for UPOS & DA portfolio.
• Act as technical design authority for payment authorization, processing, switching, and settlement.
• Provide application development and infrastructure oversight across multiple tracks, ensuring secure, scalable, low-latency, highly available payment solutions.
• Lead architecture and engineering decisions across Java and Spring Boot, RESTful APIs, databases, container tech, cloud services, and payment-system integrations.
• Shape multi-year transformation plans covering legacy modernization, API enablement, cloud adoption, observability, automation, and operational resilience.
• Review and approve major solution designs, data models, non-functional requirements, capacity, security controls, and implementation approaches.
• Oversee the portfolio of projects and change requests, ensuring prioritization, governance, risk management, and delivery across tracks.
• Establish and enforce engineering standards through architecture reviews, design reviews, code reviews, and delivery assurance processes.
• Provide technical leadership across Product Development, Technology, Enterprise Architecture, Cybersecurity, Infrastructure, QA, DevOps, Operations, Finance, vendors, and banks/payment schemes.
• Facilitate cross-functional collaboration to design and implement innovative payment services aligned with business objectives, architecture, regulatory requirements, and best practices.
• Develop and maintain strong relationships across Technology to ensure seamless service transition from development to production and adherence to processes.
• Ensure delivery complies with PCI-DSS, secure development standards, technology risk controls, data protection obligations, and internal policies.
• Identify systemic risks, vulnerabilities, architectural constraints, and technical debt, and prioritize remediation to improve security, performance, availability, recoverability, maintainability, and cost efficiency.
• Lead resolution of critical production issues and major incidents, validate root causes, and implement sustainable corrective actions across the portfolio.
• Maintain open communication with stakeholders to identify opportunities for process improvements.

Job description

Team and Position Summary

We are seeking a Principal Engineer to serve as the application development and delivery lead, as well as the senior technical authority, for the UPOS & DA application portfolio. The role is responsible for defining the target architecture, engineering strategy, technology standards, modernization roadmap, and major solution decisions for mission-critical digital payment platforms and Java-based backend applications.

The successful candidate will guide a dynamic technical team in designing and delivering secure, scalable, high-performance, and highly available payment solutions. The role is accountable for driving the speed, quality, reliability, and operational resilience of application delivery while ensuring that solutions align with business objectives, cybersecurity standards, payment regulations, and industry best practices.

As an effective communicator, the candidate must be able to translate complex business requirements into clear technical strategies and solution architectures, communicate design decisions effectively to engineering teams and senior stakeholders, and provide direction across multiple concurrent development tracks. The role will collaborate closely with Product Development, Business Development, Technology, Architecture, Cybersecurity, Infrastructure, QA, DevOps, Operations, Finance, vendors, banks, and payment schemes to ensure successful delivery from concept through production.

The ideal candidate will possess deep application engineering and payment-domain expertise, strong executive-level communication and influencing skills, and substantial hands-on software development experience. The candidate must be able to establish engineering guardrails, manage technical risks, guide complex transformation programmes, mentor senior engineers, and remain hands-on when resolving high-impact architectural, delivery, and production challenges.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and govern the target application architecture, engineering roadmap, technology standards, and modernization strategy for the UPOS & DA application portfolio.
• Act as the technical design authority for complex and high-risk initiatives involving payment authorization, transaction processing, switching, settlement, reconciliation, onboarding, API integration, and payment gateway services.
• Provide application development and infrastructure oversight across multiple implementation tracks, ensuring the delivery of secure, scalable, low-latency, highly available, and resilient payment solutions.
• Lead architecture and engineering decisions across Java and Spring Boot applications, RESTful APIs, Solace JMS, databases, Linux or RHEL platforms, container technologies, cloud services, and payment-system integrations.
• Shape and drive multi-year transformation plans covering legacy application modernization, Java and Spring Boot framework modernization, API enablement, cloud adoption, observability, automation, and operational resilience.
• Review and approve major solution designs, integration patterns, data models, non-functional requirements, capacity plans, security controls, source code, and implementation approaches.
• Oversee the assigned portfolio of projects and change requests, ensuring effective prioritization, resource planning, technical governance, risk management, and delivery across multiple concurrent development tracks.
• Establish and enforce engineering standards through architecture reviews, design reviews, code reviews, technical forums, and delivery assurance processes.
• Provide technical leadership across Product Development, Business Development, Technology, Enterprise Architecture, Cybersecurity, Infrastructure, QA, DevOps, Operations, Finance, vendors, and banks and payment schemes.
• Facilitate cross-functional collaboration to design and implement innovative payment services that align with business objectives, enterprise architecture, regulatory requirements, and industry best practices.
• Develop and maintain strong working relationships across the Technology division to ensure seamless service transition from development to production and adherence to established development, testing, release, and operational processes.
• Ensure application architecture and engineering delivery comply with PCI-DSS, secure development standards, technology risk controls, data protection obligations, internal policies, and applicable payment scheme mandates.
• Identify systemic risks, application vulnerabilities, architectural constraints, and technical debt, and prioritize remediation to improve security, performance, availability, recoverability, maintainability, and cost efficiency.
• Lead the resolution of critical production issues and major incidents, validate root causes, and ensure sustainable corrective and preventive actions are implemented across the application portfolio.
• Maintain open communication with internal and external stakeholders to identify opportunities for process optim