Staff Engineer - Payments (Mobile & Terminal Experiences)

EngineersOfAI; Chicago (IL); Hybrid; USD 210,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Adyen is seeking a Staff Engineer in Payments to architect and guide the next generation of payment experiences across mobile, terminal, and backend systems. You will collaborate with product, design, legal, and other partners to translate goals into scalable technical plans.

You will mentor engineers, drive observability and security across services, and lead architectural decisions to align cross-functional teams globally.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering experience in production environments.
• 5+ years mobile development experience on Android (Kotlin) or iOS (Swift).
• Ability to lead cross-functional teams across time zones.
• Deep knowledge of mobile architecture, SDK design, concurrency, and performance.

Responsibilities

• Build next-generation payment experiences across devices and surfaces.
• Define long-term technical strategy for complex payment experiences.
• Lead resolution of reliability, performance, security challenges at global scale.
• Partner with Product, Design, Legal to align goals and priorities.
• Establish architectural boundaries, APIs, and patterns for independent teams.
• Mentor engineers and elevate engineering excellence across levels.

Skills

Staff-level leadership

Mobile development

Cross-platform

Distributed systems

Job description

This is Adyen

Adyen provides payments, data, and financial products in a single solution for customers like Meta, Uber, H&M, and Microsoft - making us the financial technology platform of choice. At Adyen, everything we do is engineered for ambition.

For our teams, we create an environment with opportunities for our people to succeed, backed by the culture and support to ensure they are enabled to truly own their careers. We are motivated individuals who tackle unique technical challenges at scale and solve them as a team. Together, we deliver innovative and ethical solutions that help businesses achieve their ambitions faster.

Staff Engineer - Payments

As a Staff Engineer in the Payments organization, you will act as a trusted advisor and shape the future of how businesses and shoppers interact with Adyen's payment platform. Operating at the intersection of mobile technology, point-of-sale systems, and backend services, you will drive the technical direction for our Terminal and Mobile experiences.

This is a highly hands-on technical leadership role. You will architect unified shopper journeys, solve complex challenges across the payments ecosystem, and multiply the impact of the teams around you. By driving technical decisions through ambiguity and establishing foundational architecture, you will lead the evolution of Adyen's next generation of payment experiences.

What you'll do

• Build the next generation of payment experiences: Help Adyen evolve beyond traditional terminal and mobile boundaries toward seamless shopper and merchant experiences across devices, applications, and payment surfaces.
• Architect & Innovate: Define and drive the long-term technical strategy for complex payment experiences spanning mobile apps, SDKs, payment terminals, and distributed backend systems.
• Solve Complex Problems: Lead the resolution of challenging technical issues involving reliability, performance, security, payment flows, and device compatibility at a global scale.
• Drive Strategic Alignment: Act as a strategic partner to Product, Design, Legal, and other stakeholders. Translate ambiguous business goals into executable plans, balance short-term delivery with long-term investments, and confidently push back using data and prototypes (POCs) to drive consensus.
• Lead Across Boundaries: Establish clear architectural boundaries, APIs, and integration patterns that enable cross-functional teams to move independently.
• Develop Technical Talent: Mentor engineers across levels. Tailor your coaching to help Senior Engineers tackle complex problems independently, while demystifying internal systems and explaining the "why" behind decisions for Junior Engineers.
• Champion Engineering Excellence: Raise the bar for observability, testing, and operational excellence. Work internally and with external technology partners (e.g., OS providers, hardware vendors) to ensure robust, secure integrations.

Who you are

• Experience: 10+ years of hands-on software engineering experience in modern production environments, with a proven track record operating at a Staff-level scope.
• Mobile Expertise: 5+ years of direct, hands-on mobile development experience with proven proficiency in either Android (Kotlin) OR iOS (Swift). You have shipped and owned production mobile code, not just directed it.
• Cross-Platform Mindset: A strong willingness and demonstrated ability to cross-train onto the mobile platform you don't currently specialize in. You must be comfortable working across platform boundaries.
• Collaborative Leadership: A proactive relationship-builder who can set technical direction and influence without formal authority, manage diverse stakeholders across time zones, and build alignment on difficult technical decisions.
• Technical Depth: Deep understanding of mobile architecture, SDK design, concurrency, performance, and large-scale distributed systems. Experience building and maintaini