Staff Software Engineer, Risk

Airwallex; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Airwallex seeks a senior Java-focused software engineer to join the Risk Platform in Seattle. You will help protect 150,000+ businesses and manage billions in transactions daily, collaborating across global teams to implement cutting-edge risk strategies using graph, ML, and streaming tech.

The role emphasizes high concurrency, scalable systems, and mentorship to uplift the team’s engineering practices while delivering reliable payment solutions worldwide.

Qualifications

• Bachelor degree in computer science or related field.
• Strong Java development experience with a focus on high concurrency systems.
• Proficiency with Spring/Spring Boot and RESTful services.
• Experience in large-scale distributed, high-load environments.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with senior engineers to develop payment products and transaction systems using Java/Kotlin.
• Independently design and develop components on the microservice framework.
• Experiment with new technologies and propose architectural improvements.
• Mentor junior engineers in software engineering practices and coding standards.

Skills

Java core

High concurrency

RESTful services

Java multi-threading

Distributed systems

Design patterns

Data optimization

Communication skills

Education

Bachelor's degree in computer science

Tools

Spring / Spring Boot

Gradle

Maven

JSON/XML

Job description

About Airwallex

Airwallex is the only unified payments and financial platform for global businesses. Powered by our unique combination of proprietary infrastructure and software, we empower over 250,000 businesses worldwide – including Brex, Navan, Qantas, SHEIN and many more – with fully integrated solutions to manage everything from business accounts, payments, spend management and treasury, to embedded finance at a global scale.

Proudly founded in Melbourne, we have a team of over 2,300 of the brightest and most innovative people in tech across 27 offices around the globe. Valued at US$11 billion and backed by world-leading investors including T. Rowe Price, Visa, Mastercard, Robinhood Ventures, Sequoia, Salesforce Ventures, DST Global, and Lone Pine Capital, Airwallex is leading the charge in building the global payments and financial platform of the future. If you’re ready to do the most ambitious work of your career, join us.

Attributes We Value

We hire successful builders with founder‑like energy who want real impact, accelerated learning, and true ownership. You bring strong role‑related expertise and sharp thinking, and you’re motivated by our mission and operating principles. You move fast with good judgment, dig deep with curiosity, and make decisions from first principles, balancing speed and rigor.

You're humble and collaborative; turn zero‑to‑one ideas into real products, and you “get stuff done” end‑to‑end. You use AI to work smarter and solve problems faster. Here, you’ll tackle complex, high‑visibility problems with exceptional teammates and grow your career as we build the future of global banking. If that sounds like you, let’s build what’s next.

About the Team

Risk Platform builds the decisioning infrastructure that sits between Airwallex and every dollar that moves through it, protecting 150,000+ businesses moving over US$260 billion a year across 200+ countries and 90+ currencies, and deciding, often in milliseconds, whether a new signup is real, a payment is safe, or a login is who they claim to be. The hard part is that fraud evolves fast, and every decision carries a two‑sided cost: miss an attack and money is lost, over‑block and a legitimate business can't get paid. We build this with streaming pipelines processing billions of events a day, graph databases exposing coordinated fraud rings, ML models scoring every transaction, and LLM agents that triage alerts. You don't need a fintech background, just an appetite for adversarial systems problems where the scoreboard is measured in dollars. If you want to help scale one of the world's fastest‑growing financial platforms safely, this is the team.

About the Role

Our mission is to keep Airwallex's products and services safe and secure, and make Airwallex a trusted partner for businesses around the world. We use cutting‑edge technologies, such as graph, ML, and LLM, to implement and improve our strategy.

Our team expands across Seattle, Singapore and China. We collaborate with other teams and our customers globally to ensure a holistic approach for risk management.

This role is based in Seattle.

Responsibilities:

• 1. Collaborate with the senior technical team to develop and enhance the company’s payment products and transaction systems using Java/ Kotlin.
• 2. Independently design and develop components on the company’s microservice framework.
• 3. Experiment with new technologies and propose architectural improvements.
• 4. Support and mentor less‑experienced team members in software engineering practices and coding standards.

Who you are

We're looking for people who meet the minimum qualifications for this role. The preferred qualifications are great to have, but are not mandatory.

Minimum qualifications:

• 1. More than 8 years of Core Java development, more than 5 years of experience in Internet application / large financial system / e‑commerce platform development;
• 2. More than three years experience in risk platform or payment platform development;
• 3. Bachelor degree in computer science and related majors;
• 4. Proficient in Java, familiar with Java multi‑threading, high concurrency, IO / NIO, network communication, etc .;
• 5. Familiar with commonly used design patterns, with experience in design and development of large‑scale distributed, high concurrency, high load, high availability systems;
• 6. Master various common server technologies, which can optimize service response and data query, ensure various service quality, and solve the problems of high concurrency and high availability;
• 7. Familiar with Spring / Spring Boot and RESTful services;
• 8. Master Gradle / Maven and other build tools;
• 9. Familiar with JSON & XML.

Preferred qualifications:

• 1. In‑depth knowledge of risk management strategies and fraud detection techniques, particularly within financial and fintech industries.
• 2. Familiarity with graph databases and the ability to utilize them for pattern and anomaly detection.
• 3. Experience with machine learning models and frameworks for predictive risk analytics.
• 4. Familiarity with real‑time data streaming technologies like Apache Kafka/Flink to ensure timely detection and response to potential threats.
• 5.Strong data analytics skills, with experience using tools like ClickHouse, Spark, or NoSQL databases for large‑scale data processing and risk analysis.
• 6. Advanced problem‑solving skills with prior experience in incident response and risk mitigation planning
• 7. Strong team player with effective communication skills.

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.