Senior Java Engineer (Payments)

Payforge; United States; Remote; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Payforge is seeking a Senior Java Engineer to own the design and delivery of reliable, scalable payments platforms. You’ll work with international clients and help shape architecture in a fully remote team.

Lead end-to-end development with Java 21/25, Spring Boot 4, Kafka, SQL databases, and cloud tooling. Mentor engineers, review code, and drive CI/CD, testing, and observability.

If you value security, accuracy, and performance in fintech, join Payforge to build the backbone of modern payments.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of professional Java development experience
• Hands-on experience with payments/fintech systems
• Java 21/25 (LTS) and Spring Boot 4 / Spring Framework 7
• Strong knowledge of Apache Kafka and asynchronous processing
• Relational DBs (PostgreSQL, MySQL) and ORM (Hibernate, JPA)
• Strong API design skills (REST, OpenAPI)
• CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, Helm, Terraform) and build tools (Gradle, Maven)
• AWS, Docker, and Kubernetes experience
• Testing discipline (JUnit 5, Mockito, Testcontainers) and observability (OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana)
• Experience mentoring engineers and leading code reviews

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain enterprise Java apps with Spring Boot, owning features end-to-end
• Lead technical design for components including service boundaries and data models
• Collaborate with product managers, solution architects, and DevOps to translate needs
• Own application reliability, performance, and security/compliance
• Build and maintain integrations with external systems and APIs
• Write clean, testable code and raise the bar for teammates
• Improve CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, observability, and deployment processes
• Lead code reviews, mentor engineers, and act as escalation point
• Own production incidents through root-cause analysis and durable fixes

Skills

Java

Spring Boot

REST APIs

Apache Kafka

SQL (PostgreSQL/MySQL)

CI/CD

AWS

Docker

Kubernetes

JUnit 5

Mockito

Testcontainers

Code reviews

Mentoring

Tools

Gradle

Maven

OpenTelemetry

Prometheus

Grafana

Job description

We’re looking for a Senior Java Engineer to join Payforge and take technical ownership of reliable, scalable payments platforms — the systems that move money securely, at scale, where getting it wrong isn’t an option.

We’ve just begun working with a few of the most recognised names in global payments — organisations whose infrastructure sits behind everyday transactions — so the scale is real and the engineering bar is high. As a specialist payments consultancy, we offer variety: new clients, new platforms, and hard problems you haven’t solved before, rather than one codebase for the next five years. We’ve been fully remote from the start.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain enterprise-grade applications using Java and Spring Boot, owning features end-to-end from design through production.
• Lead technical design for significant components — defining service boundaries, data models, integration patterns, and non-functional requirements.
• Partner with product managers, solution architects, and DevOps engineers to translate business needs into technical solutions — and challenge requirements where the technical trade-offs matter.
• Own application reliability, performance, and compliance with security and regulatory standards.
• Build and maintain integrations with external systems, APIs, and third-party providers.
• Write clean, testable, efficient code and raise the bar for those around you.
• Drive improvements to CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, observability, and deployment processes.
• Lead code reviews, mentor mid-level and junior engineers, and act as a technical point of escalation.
• Own production incidents through root-cause analysis to durable fixes.

Skills & Experience

• 7+ years of professional Java development experience, with a track record of owning non-trivial systems in production.
• Practical, day-to-day use of AI coding assistants and LLMs as part of the development workflow — for implementation, refactoring, test generation, debugging, and documentation — combined with the engineering judgement to review and validate what they produce for correctness, security, and maintainability. We use these tools heavily across everything we build, and we expect them to be directed by an engineer who knows when the output is wrong.
• Hands-on experience building or operating payments or fintech systems — card issuing, acquiring, processing, authorization, settlement, cross-border, or equivalent. You should be comfortable with the realities of money movement: idempotency, reconciliation, transaction lifecycles, and the regulatory constraints that come with them.
• Strong knowledge of Java 21/25 (LTS) and Spring Boot 4 / Spring Framework 7, building RESTful and event-driven microservices.
• Solid experience with Apache Kafka and asynchronous processing, including idempotency and exactly-once semantics.
• Experience with relational databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL) and ORM frameworks (Hibernate, JPA).
• Strong API design skills (REST, OpenAPI) and integration best practices.
• Confident with modern build tooling — Gradle and Maven — and with CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, Helm, Terraform).
• Hands-on experience with AWS, Docker, and Kubernetes.
• Strong testing discipline (JUnit 5, Mockito, Testcontainers) and production observability (OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana).
• Experience mentoring engineers, leading code reviews, and working in distributed teams.

Nice to have

• Depth in payments standards and protocols: ISO 20022, ISO 8583, EMV, 3-D Secure, or scheme certification.
• Depth in security: encryption, OAuth2/OIDC, JWT, mTLS, HSM integration, tokenization.
• Infrastructure-as-code and platform engineering experience.
• Experience working directly with enterprise clients in a consultancy or professional-services setting.

What we value

• Precision & reliability — software that meets the highest standards for performance and accuracy.
• Security-first mindset — applying strong security practices throughout the development process.
• Adaptability — moving between domains, clients, and problem spaces without losing momentum.
• Collaboration — working effectively with technical and business stakeholders across teams and geographies.
• Ownership & accountability— taking initiative to deliver high-quality, production-ready code.
• Technical leadership — lifting the standard of the whole team, not just your own output.
• Curiosity & innovation — staying current with emerging trends across the payments industry.

About Payforge

Payforge is a specialist professional-services company focused exclusively on payments and fintech. We help clients deliver high-quality, scalable technology solutions in an evolving global financial landscape — including some of the most established names in the industry.

Equal Opportunity Statement

Payforge is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or veteran status. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds.