SlipstreamJobs tracks this role from the company's public career site. Apply directly on the employer's site.
Airwallex is an AI-native financial operating system serving over 675,000 businesses globally, including McLaren Racing, Qantas, SHEIN, and TikTok. The company provides regulated financial infrastructure for global payments and commerce, operating across North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific with 85+ licenses and 2,700+ employees across 27 offices.
As Head of Engineering for the Payments Platform, you will own end-to-end strategy, architecture, and roadmap for critical payment infrastructure components including payment processing, routing, settlement, reconciliation, and partner integrations across global markets. You will lead and grow a high-performing engineering organization by managing Engineering Managers and senior technical talent across multiple squads, fostering a culture of ownership, technical excellence, and continuous improvement.
Key responsibilities include providing architectural direction for high-volume, mission-critical payment systems with emphasis on reliability, observability, security, scalability, and developer productivity. You will drive execution across multiple concurrent initiatives, balancing short-term delivery with long-term platform investments and operational health. You will partner closely with Product, Commercial, Risk, Compliance, and regional engineering leaders to ensure platform capabilities support growth, customer experience, and regulatory requirements.
The role requires comfort with ownership and autonomy—you own the roadmap and outcomes, make decisions with incomplete information, and move quickly. You will work across multiple countries and time zones as part of a global team, occasionally flexing hours to maintain connection.
REQUIREMENTS:
- 10+ years of software engineering experience, with 5+ years in engineering leadership roles
- Demonstrated people management experience, including managing Engineering Managers or Engineering Leads, with a track record of building and scaling high-performing teams
- Strong product thinking and ability to partner with Product Management to define roadmaps, prioritize delivery, and drive business outcomes
- Deep technical fluency in software architecture and system design, with experience guiding architectural decisions for large-scale, complex distributed systems
- Proven ability to operate in fast-paced, high-growth environments where incremental improvement, ownership, and speed of execution are valued
- Experience in fintech, financial services, payments, or similarly regulated industry where correctness and data integrity are critical
