Senior Payments Engineer
Payment Orchestration Platform • Infrastructure Engineering • Senior Individual Contributor

Function: Engineering – Payments Infrastructure Level: Senior Individual Contributor Reports To: CTO / Head of Engineering Location: Remote Type: Full-Time

ABOUT THE COMPANY

Our client is an all-in-one payment processing platform built for businesses that operate in complex, high-velocity, and often high-risk environments. From online merchants and e-commerce operators to subscription platforms, prop trading firms, and specialty verticals such as gaming, nutraceuticals, and telemedicine, the platform removes the friction that traditional acquirers create.

The platform delivers same-day approvals, zero rolling reserves, 100+ plug-and-play integrations, a proprietary chargeback management layer, and tailored acquiring solutions — all backed by a team that prides itself on combining advanced fintech with genuine human service. With a 4.9/5 merchant satisfaction rating and a rapidly expanding client base, the company is entering a defining phase of infrastructure buildout.

They are now building the next layer of their technology stack: a processor-agnostic payment orchestration platform that will sit between merchants, gateways, processors, and acquiring banks — enabling intelligent routing, improved authorization rates, enhanced resilience, and a future-proof foundation for global scale.

THE OPPORTUNITY

This is a high-ownership, high-impact role. As the Senior Payments Engineer, you will serve as a founding technical voice on the orchestration platform — architecting systems, making consequential infrastructure decisions, and owning a significant portion of the payments stack from the ground up. You will work alongside the CTO and business leadership to translate complex payment industry dynamics into elegant, scalable engineering solutions.

This is not a role for an engineer who has simply consumed payment APIs. We are looking for someone who has built the infrastructure that others sit on top of — and who is ready to do it again at speed.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

Platform Architecture & Design

Architect and build a next-generation payment orchestration layer that abstracts across multiple gateways, processors, and acquiring relationships.
Design intelligent routing engines that optimize for authorization rate, cost, latency, and risk tolerance at the transaction level.
Own the technical vision for gateway abstraction — enabling the business to add or swap processors without disrupting merchant integrations.

Core Payments Engineering

Build and maintain robust implementations of card authorization flows, settlement pipelines, tokenization/vaulting, and recurring billing infrastructure.
Integrate directly with payment processors and acquirers via their native APIs (Adyen, Stripe, and others), handling edge cases, retries, idempotency, and failure modes.
Manage the full payment lifecycle: authorization, capture, void, refund, dispute, and chargeback handling at scale.

Infrastructure & Reliability

Design distributed, fault-tolerant systems capable of handling high-volume transaction loads with sub-second latency requirements.
Implement observability frameworks — metrics, alerting, and tracing — specific to payment flows so the business has real-time visibility into authorization rates, decline reasons, and system health.
Establish engineering standards, runbooks, and on-call practices for payments infrastructure.

Security & Compliance

Ensure the platform is built and maintained to PCI DSS standards, working with internal and external QSAs as required.
Architect fraud prevention and risk control layers that protect merchants and the business without creating unnecessary friction for legitimate transactions.
Implement tokenization and encryption best practices for cardholder data handling.

Cross-Functional Leadership

Collaborate with product, operations, and risk teams to translate business requirements into technical specifications.
Provide technical mentorship and guidance to junior engineers as the team scales.
Contribute to vendor evaluation and partnership decisions with processors, gateways, and acquiring banks.

REQUIRED EXPERIENCE & QUALIFICATIONS

5+ years of backend engineering experience, with at least 3 years focused on payments infrastructure (not simply payments API consumption).
Direct, hands-on integration experience with Adyen and/or Stripe at the API and platform level — understanding their terminal APIs, webhooks, dispute flows, payouts, and edge-case behaviors.
Demonstrable experience building payment orchestration, gateway abstraction, or multi-processor routing systems.
Deep knowledge of card processing: authorization request/response flows, ISO 8583 or equivalent message formats, settlement file handling, chargeback lifecycle, and acquiring bank relationships.
Strong proficiency with backend engineering fundamentals: RESTful and event-driven API design, distributed systems, asynchronous processing, and database design for financial data.
Hands-on experience with tokenization, card vaulting, network tokens, and recurring billing / subscription payment models.
Working knowledge of PCI DSS compliance requirements and their engineering implications (scope reduction, P2PE, tokenization strategies).
Experience implementing fraud prevention controls, velocity checks, risk scoring, and chargeback prevention tooling.
Proven ability to build for reliability: idempotency, retry logic, circuit breakers, and graceful degradation in payment-critical systems.

KEY TECHNICAL SKILLS

BONUS EXPERIENCE (NICE TO HAVE)

Experience operating within or building for merchant acquiring, sponsor bank, ISO/MSP, or Payment Facilitator (PayFac) models.
Background working with high-volume, real-time transaction environments (millions of transactions per day).
Familiarity with alternative payment methods: ACH/bank transfers, digital wallets (Apple Pay, Google Pay), BNPL, or international payment rails.
Prior experience building payment gateway technology, gateway routing engines, or processor-agnostic payment platforms from the ground up.
Knowledge of interchange optimization, BIN management, or acquiring economics.
Experience in regulated fintech environments and working alongside compliance, legal, and risk functions.

WHO YOU ARE

You think in systems. You don't just write code — you architect infrastructure that others will build on top of for years.
You are deeply curious about the payments ecosystem and stay current with network rules, processor updates, and industry trends.
You are comfortable with ambiguity. Early-stage infrastructure work requires judgment calls; you make them thoughtfully and communicate them clearly.
You take ownership. When something is broken or underbuilt, you identify it and fix it — without needing to be asked.
You communicate with clarity. You can explain complex payment flows to non-technical stakeholders and write documentation that engineers actually use.
You care about correctness. In payments, bugs cost money. You build with the attention to detail that financial systems demand.

WHY THIS ROLE

Greenfield infrastructure opportunity: you will architect systems from scratch, not inherit a legacy codebase.
Direct impact on company trajectory: this role shapes the core technical foundation of a rapidly growing payments business.
Mission-aligned merchant focus: the platform serves businesses that traditional acquirers underserve — your work has tangible market impact.
Collaborative culture: a team of operators who value direct communication, authenticity, and getting things done.
Competitive compensation, equity participation, and a remote-friendly work environment.

Senior Payments Engineer - 60895972903