Sr Staff Engineer - Cross Border

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

At Early Warning, we’ve powered and protected the U.S. financial system for over thirty years with cutting‑edge solutions like Zelle®, Paze®, and so much more. As a trusted name in payments, we partner with thousands of institutions to increase access to financial services and protect transactions for hundreds of millions of consumers and small businesses.

Early Warning follows a hybrid work model to allow for a more collaborative working environment.

Candidates responding to this posting must independently possess the eligibility to work in the United States, for any employer, at the date of hire. This position is ineligible for employment Visa sponsorship.

Overall Purpose

This position leads technical strategy and architecture for complex cross-border and digital asset payment capabilities, driving consistency, quality, and long‑term health across multiple engineering teams.

Essential Functions

• Partners with software engineering, product, and architecture to shape engineering approaches, share knowledge and experience.
• Own the technical strategy for broad or complex requirements with insightful and forward‑looking approaches that go beyond the direct team and solve large open‑ended problems.
• Own architectural design and technical patterns for cross‑border money movement and digital asset settlement systems.
• Resolve complex technical and scalability challenges across distributed, regulated payment platforms.
• Mentor engineers and guide teams in building secure, resilient, and compliant global payment solutions.
• Responsible for department‑wide design, patterns and code approaches.
• Reviews and validates effectiveness of code output from multiple teams.
• Represent engineering in cross‑functional team sessions and able to prezent sound and thoughtful arguments to persuade others. Adapt to the situation and can draw from a range of strategies to influence people in a way that results in agreement or behavior change
• Lead a broad functional area and direct efforts through the functional team members along with team's overall planning.
• Collaborate and partner with product managers, designers, and other engineering groups to conceptualize, build new features and create product descriptions.
• Actively own features or systems and define their long‑term health, while also improving the health of surrounding systems.
• Assist support and operations teams in identified and quickly resolving production issues. Developing and implementing tests for ensuring the quality, performance, and scalability of our application.
• Develop and mentor other engineers. May serve as a technical leader for cross‑functional projects.
• Actively seeks out ways to improve engineering standards, tooling, and processes.
• Supporting the said commitment to risk management and protecting confidentiality and security of [data] and systems.

Minimum Qualifications

• Education and/or experience typically obtained through a Bachelor’s degree in computer science or related technical field.
• Twelve or more years of relevant related experience.
• 9 or more years of experience in the development of distributed systems, SaaS, cloud solutions, micro services.
• Hands‑on Docker experience.
• Proven experience leading the design and evolution of complex, large‑scale payment or cross‑border transaction platforms in regulated environments.
• Deep technical understanding of digital asset or stablecoin‑based systems, including security, scalability, and operational reliability considerations.
• Two or more years of experience in developing front‑end solutions. Hands‑on familiarity with modern frameworks (Angular/React).
• Eight or more years of working experience with Java/Spring. Proficiency in Maven/Gradle.
• Demonstrated experience in delivering business‑critical systems to the market.
• Ability to influence and work in a collaborative team environment across multiple departments.
• Experience designing/developing scalable systems.
• Experience with event‑driven architecture and messaging frameworks (Pub/Sub, Kafka, RabbitMQ, etc).
• Working experience with cloud infrastructure (Google Cloud Platform, AWS, Azure, etc).
• Knowledge of mature engineering practices (CI/CD, testing, secure coding, etc).
• Knowledge of ... Wait, the snippet cuts.

Preferred Qualifications

• MS or PHD
• JavaScript and scripting frameworks experience (JQuery, AngularJS)
• Monitoring and Alerting systems experience (AppDynamics)
• Experience with Go Lang, Java or similar language
• Knowledge of ACH/EFT
• Knowledge of real time payment networks(RTP, FedNow)
• FinTech experience
• Kubernetes experience

Physical Requirements

Working conditions consist of a normal office environment. Work is primarily sedentary and requires extensive use ...