Staff Software Engineer, GTPN Platform

Airwallex; United States; On-site; USD 180,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

Airwallex in the United States is seeking an experienced software architect to help design and operate distributed payment systems at scale. You will influence core infrastructure across real-time clearing, settlement, and routing in 150+ countries.

You will own reliability and observability, define SLAs, and lead design reviews with teams across the US, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. A strong background in Java/Kotlin and JVM ecosystems is preferred.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience building and operating production software, including distributed systems.
• Strong system architecture skills for fault tolerance, idempotency, asynchronous workflows, reconciliation, settlement, and failure recovery.
• Experience owning reliability for critical systems, including defining SLAs, designing graceful degradation, building observability, and leading incident response.
• Strong programming or scripting skills in Java, Kotlin, C++, Python or a similar language.
• Bachelor's degree in CS, Software Engineering, or a related field.
• Experience setting technical direction across multiple teams through design reviews, RFCs, and architecture decisions.
• Strong analytical skills using operational and product data to guide technical decisions.

Responsibilities

• Architect distributed payment systems at global scale, designing and evolving core infrastructure across real-time local clearing, SWIFT, and proprietary treasury routing in 150+ countries.
• Solve complex financial integrity problems by building idempotent, fault-tolerant systems for multi-currency reconciliation, asynchronous settlement, and compensation logic across unreliable banking partners.
• Own the reliability and observability of the payment network by defining SLAs, designing for graceful degradation during partner outages, and building real-time payment health monitoring.
• Use payment telemetry to optimise routing, identify bottlenecks, and measure how infrastructure changes affect settlement speed and conversion.
• Set technical direction across a distributed engineering team by leading design reviews for platform-wide changes, collaborating with engineering hubs across the US, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Shanghai.

Skills

Distributed systems

System architecture

Reliability engineering

SLAs and observability

Programming: Java/Python/Kotlin/C++

Bachelor's degree in CS/Software Eng

Technical leadership across teams

Data-driven decision making

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or Software Engineering

Tools

Spring Boot

Java/Kotlin on JVM

Job description

About Airwallex

Airwallex is the AI-native financial operating system for a real-time, intelligent economy. More than 675,000 businesses, including McLaren Racing, Qantas, SHEIN, and TikTok, use us, directly or through our platform partners, to run their financial operations or build and monetize financial products of their own.

We started in Melbourne in 2015 to build the infrastructure global commerce runs on. We're the regulated backbone behind global payments: not by accident, but by design. A decade plus, 85+ licenses, and a financial infrastructure spanning North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific.

We're co-headquartered in San Francisco and Singapore, with more than 2,300 people across 27 offices. We hire builders with founder-level energy, people who move fast with good judgment, dig in with real curiosity, and make calls from first principles rather than waiting to be told what to do. Read our operating principles to see it in full.

How you'll make impact

You'll architect distributed payment systems at global scale, designing and evolving core infrastructure across real-time local clearing, SWIFT, and proprietary treasury routing in 150+ countries.

• Architect distributed payment systems at global scale, designing and evolving core infrastructure across real-time local clearing, SWIFT, and proprietary treasury routing in 150+ countries.

• Solve complex financial integrity problems by building idempotent, fault-tolerant systems for multi-currency reconciliation, asynchronous settlement, and compensation logic across unreliable banking partners.

• Own the reliability and observability of the payment network by defining SLAs, designing for graceful degradation during partner outages, and building real-time payment health monitoring.

• Use payment telemetry to optimise routing, identify bottlenecks, and measure how infrastructure changes affect settlement speed and conversion.

• Set technical direction across a distributed engineering team by leading design reviews for platform-wide changes, collaborating with engineering hubs across the US, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Shanghai.

You'll work from our Seoul office five days a week.

What we're looking for

Essentials

• 7+ years' experience building and operating production software, including distributed systems at scale.

• Strong system architecture skills, with practical experience designing for fault tolerance, idempotency, asynchronous workflows, reconciliation, settlement, and failure recovery.

• Experience owning reliability for critical systems, including defining SLAs, designing graceful degradation, building observability, and leading incident response.

• Strong programming or scripting skills in a language such as Java, Kotlin, C++, Python or a similar language.

• A bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field.

• Experience setting technical direction across multiple teams through design reviews, RFCs, and architecture decisions.

• Strong analytical skills, using operational and product data to guide technical decisions.

Preferred

• Experience in fintech, payments, or other regulated financial domains.

• Deep experience with JVM-based ecosystems, including Java or Kotlin with Spring or Spring Boot.

• Prior experience leading teams responsible for high-availability, low-latency systems.

You'll thrive here if

• You're comfortable owning the roadmap yourself.

• You hold yourself to a high standard even when no one is watching. Quality and accountability aren't external expectations, they're internal ones.

• You're comfortable with ambiguity. Give you a problem, not a prescription, and you'll run with it.

• You enjoy working closely with people across multiple countries and time zones as part of one connected, global team.

• You can advocate hard for a position, then fully support the team's direction once a call is made.

Learn more about your team

The Global Treasury and Payment Network (GTPN) team sits at the heart of Airwallex's payment infrastructure. As one of our foundational businesses and a major contributor to our growth, we build and operate the core treasury and payment infrastructure that powers our global financial products. We operate at the intersection of global financial infrastructure and modern product innovation, expanding the reach and capabilities of our treasury and payment network, strengthening reliability and resilience, and building innovative payment products at global scale. We're a distributed engineering team, with talented engineers across established and emerging hubs around the world. As we continue to expand, you'll work closely with product managers, designers, and engineers to build and evolve products and platforms that solve complex financial problems and support businesses around the world.

Equal opportunity

Airwallex is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We value diversity and anyone seeking employment at Airwallex is considered based on merit, qualifications, competence and talent. We don't regard color, religion, race, national origin, sexual orientation, ancestry, citizenship, sex, marital or family status, disability, gender, or any other legally protected status when making our hiring decisions. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.