Payments Platform Architect & Cross-Border Tech Lead

Early Warning®; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Early Warning is seeking a senior engineering leader to drive technical strategy and architecture for cross-border and digital asset payment capabilities. You will shape approaches with product and architecture teams, own broad design patterns, and guide multi-team initiatives toward scalable, secure solutions.

Ideal candidates have extensive distributed systems experience, strong Java/Spring background, Docker/Kubernetes expertise, and familiarity with modern frontend frameworks.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science or related field.
• Twelve+ years of relevant experience.
• 9+ years developing distributed systems, SaaS, cloud solutions, microservices.
• Hands-on Docker experience.
• Proven experience leading design of complex, large-scale payment or cross-border platforms.
• Deep understanding of digital asset or stablecoin-based systems (security, reliability).
• 2+ years frontend experience with frameworks (Angular/React).
• 8+ years Java/Spring; proficient with Maven/Gradle.
• Experience delivering business-critical systems to market.
• Ability to influence across departments and drive collaboration.
• Experience with event-driven architecture and messaging systems (Kafka, Pub/Sub, RabbitMQ).
• Experience with cloud infrastructure (GCP, AWS, Azure).
• Knowledge of CI/CD, testing, secure coding practices.

Responsibilities

• Shape engineering approaches with product, architecture, and teams.
• Own technical strategy for broad, complex requirements beyond the direct team.
• Lead cross-border money movement and digital asset settlement architecture.
• Resolve complex scalability issues across distributed payment platforms.
• Mentor engineers and promote secure, resilient global solutions.
• Define department-wide design patterns and code practices.
• Review code output from multiple teams to ensure quality.
• Represent engineering in cross-functional sessions and persuade for alignment.
• Lead a broad functional area and coordinate planning with teams.
• Collaborate with product, design, and other engineering groups on new features.

Skills

Distributed systems

Cross-border payments

Java / Spring

Front-end (Angular/React)

Docker

Kubernetes

Event-driven architecture

Cloud platforms (GCP/AWS/Azure)

Security & reliability

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

MS or PhD (preferred)

Tools

Maven/Gradle

Kafka / Pub/Sub / RabbitMQ

Job description

Early Warning is seeking a senior engineering leader to drive technical strategy and architecture for cross-border and digital asset payment capabilities. You will shape approaches with product and architecture teams, own broad design patterns, and guide multi-team initiatives toward scalable, secure solutions.

Ideal candidates have extensive distributed systems experience, strong Java/Spring background, Docker/Kubernetes expertise, and familiarity with modern frontend frameworks.