Engineering Manager, Payments

Qualia; Austin (TX); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health plans

401k

Commuter benefits

Parental leave

Flexible time off

Onboarding program

All-hands meetings

Virtual events

Job summary

Qualia is seeking an entrepreneurial Engineering Manager to lead the Payments team in Austin, TX. You’ll be a builder/player/coach, redesigning how a modern payments function operates with AI-assisted workflows and high-liability systems.

You’ll own architectural decisions, mentor engineers, and partner with Compliance, Risk, and Accounting to meet NACHA, SOC 2, and related requirements while processing billions of dollars annually.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience as a strong full-stack web developer and 2+ years of experience managing a payments engineering team.
• Experience building or maintaining money-movement systems in regulated environments is strongly preferred.
• Familiarity with NACHA, PCI, SOC 2, OFAC screening is a strong plus.

Responsibilities

• Serve as a hands-on Engineering Manager (Player/Coach) to build the payments team.
• Design, build, and maintain systems that process ACH and wire transfers at scale (billions of dollars annually).
• Build and harden payment-processing pipelines that integrate with banking partners and third-party financial APIs.
• Implement controls for wire fraud prevention, transaction verification, and anomaly detection with security/compliance teams.
• Improve and extend core web applications for escrow accounting and money movement.
• Own architectural decisions for payments infrastructure, including data integrity and idempotency.
• Partner with Compliance, Risk, and Accounting to meet regulatory and audit requirements.

Skills

Payments engineering

Full-stack development

Leadership

Architecture decisions

Mentoring

Tools

MongoDB

Kubernetes

AWS

React

NodeJS

Job description

At Qualia, we've built the leading B2B real estate technology that transforms the home buying and selling experience into a simple, secure, and enjoyable process. Our SMB and Enterprise products bring together users from across the real estate ecosystem-homebuyers and sellers, lenders, title and escrow agents, and real estate agents onto a single shared digital closing platform, providing greater clarity and transparency to real estate transactions. Today, through our business customers across the country, millions of consumers use Qualia to close on homes every year.

What You’ll Work On

We are hiring an entrepreneurial hands-on Engineering Manager to lead Qualia’s Payments team. This is a builder/player/coach role, and you won't just run a team – you'll redesign how a modern Engineering Payments team operates when AI can do the first pass on nearly everything we used to do by hand. As an Engineering Manager, Payments, you've been in the fintech industry for a while and have a proven track record of success. You are comfortable leading complex, high-liability projects. You have experience making key architectural decisions and performing the research to back up those decisions. You've dealt with the consequences of your mistakes, and you know how to fight fires if necessary. You enjoy mentoring and providing support. You've thrived in different environments and realize that each team is unique.

Responsibilities

• Serve as a hands-on Engineering Manager (Player/Coach) to build the payments team
• Design, build, and maintain systems that process ACH and wire transfers at scale (billions of dollars annually), including origination, settlement, reconciliation, and exception handling
• Build and harden payment-processing pipelines that integrate with banking partners, payment rails, and third-party financial APIs
• Implement controls for wire fraud prevention, transaction verification, and anomaly detection alongside our security and compliance teams
• Improve and extend core web applications (frontend and backend) that support escrow accounting and closing-day money movement
• Own architectural decisions for payments infrastructure, including data integrity, idempotency, retry/failure handling, and audit logging
• Partner with Compliance, Risk, and Accounting stakeholders to ensure systems meet regulatory and audit requirements (e.g., NACHA rules, wire fraud regulations, SOC 2 controls)

YOUR BACKGROUND THAT LIKELY MAKES YOU A MATCH

• You've taken full ownership of complex, high-liability payment systems in production, and you know how to respond calmly and methodically when funds are on the line
• 5+ years of experience as a strong full-stack web developer and 2+ years of experience managing a payments engineering team
• Direct experience building or maintaining other money-movement systems (banking, fintech, payments processors, or similar regulated environments strongly preferred)
• Strong understanding of transactional integrity, idempotency, and failure-mode design in financial systems
• Familiarity with payment rails, banking APIs, or financial compliance standards (NACHA, OFAC screening, PCI, SOC 2) is a strong plus
• You have made key architectural decisions for large, high-stakes projects
• You have mentored junior developers
• You have worked on multiple engineering teams, both small and large
• Good product sense, strong attention to detail, and a passion for building systems people can trust with their money
• Background in enterprise software and fintech preferred

THE TECH STACK YOU'LL USE

• JavaScript / TypeScript / NodeJS
• SPA Frontend libraries like React and MeteorJS
• MongoDB
• Microservice architecture / Kubernetes
• AWS

While this role is based in Austin, Texas, we're open to exploring remote possibilities for qualified candidates. We have other physical office locations in San Francisco, California, and Concord, New Hampshire.

WHY QUALIA

Qualia is made up of incredibly bright, mission-driven coworkers who are passionate about using technology to solve real-world problems- and we're growing quickly. In order to continue building an engaging and dynamic organization, we're committed to giving everyone the support they need to do great work.

Our benefits package is designed to allow our team members to be their best selves, both in and out of the workplace. In addition to comprehensive health plans, a 401k program, and commuter benefits, we prioritize family and personal well-being through professional development, parental leave, and a flexible time off policy. Qualia offers a robust online onboarding program to train new hires, biweekly all hands meetings, and a variety of internal virtual events to keep employees connected.

We believe diverse perspectives and backgrounds are critical to building great technology, and our goal is to cultivate an environment where people feel equally valued and respected. Qualia is proud to be an equal-opportunity workplace, and we welcome applicants from all backgrounds regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, marital status, age, citizenship, socioeconomic status, disability, or veteran status.

By submitting your application, you acknowledge and agree to the collection, processing, and use of your personal information as described in our Employee Data Privacy Notice.