Senior Payments Platform Engineer (Java, OpenShift)

Kunai, part of the PwC Network; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 140,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Kunai, part of the PwC Network, is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to advance a high-impact digital payments modernization program. You will work across backend services, performance testing frameworks, and modern cloud-native platforms to scale payments capabilities for a major card network.

You will collaborate with cross‑functional teams, contribute to architecture decisions, and apply AI-assisted tooling to accelerate development while ensuring secure data handling and PCI compliance.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, primarily in Java.
• Strong working knowledge of relational databases – Oracle and/or PostgreSQL required.
• Experience deploying and operating services in containerized environments (OpenShift, Kubernetes, or equivalent).
• Familiarity with legacy enterprise application servers – Tomcat and/or WebSphere experience a plus.
• At least one enterprise-level performance testing engagement – defining strategy, tooling, executing tests, and presenting findings.
• Experience with performance profiling, load testing, and bottleneck resolution in high-throughput, distributed systems.
• Background in digital payments, card processing, or financial services technology strongly preferred.
• Understanding of PCI compliance requirements and secure data handling practices.
• Familiarity with event-driven architecture patterns and OpenShift-based eventing.
• Demonstrated ability to work effectively in large, matrixed program environments with multiple teams and stakeholders.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills; able to translate technical complexity for non-technical audiences.
• Comfortable operating in environments with evolving requirements and ambiguity.

Responsibilities

• Design and execute enterprise-grade performance testing strategies for payment processing services, defining frameworks, tooling, and success criteria from the ground up.
• Identify performance bottlenecks across legacy and modern service layers and drive measurable improvements through analysis and targeted optimization.
• Instrument and validate services running on Java, Oracle, Tomcat, and WebSphere as well as modern workloads running on PostgreSQL and OpenShift.
• Collaborate with backend engineers to ensure scalability requirements are met across all environments prior to release.
• Translate performance findings into clear recommendations for engineering leads and stakeholders.
• Build and maintain full-stack backend services supporting card network integration, working primarily in Java with PostgreSQL and OpenShift Container Platform (OCP).
• Contribute to application modernization efforts, migrating and re-platforming services from legacy infrastructure to cloud-native environments.
• Leverage AI-assisted development tooling to improve development velocity and code quality.
• Participate in code reviews, architectural discussions, and cross-team technical planning sessions.

Skills

Java

PostgreSQL

Oracle

OpenShift

Kubernetes

Tomcat/WebSphere

Performance testing

Distributed systems

Payments domain

Communication skills

Education

Bachelor’s Degree

Tools

GitHub Copilot

Job description

Kunai, part of the PwC Network, is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to advance a high-impact digital payments modernization program. You will work across backend services, performance testing frameworks, and modern cloud-native platforms to scale payments capabilities for a major card network.

You will collaborate with cross‑functional teams, contribute to architecture decisions, and apply AI-assisted tooling to accelerate development while ensuring secure data handling and PCI compliance.