Senior Software Engineer 1
Wise
Senior Software Engineer 1
Wise
Low-cost international money transfers with API
About the role
We’re looking for a senior engineer who enjoys understanding a customer’s problem, designing a solution and taking responsibility for how it performs in production.
This is a hands-on role with substantial ownership. You’ll have the autonomy to move work forward, alongside colleagues who contribute through shared design, reviews and pairing.
You will:
Own solutions from problem to production. Work with product managers and engineers to understand partner needs, shape the approach, and design, build, test and operate backend services.
Make thoughtful technical decisions. Explain tradeoffs clearly and balance delivery time, reliability and maintainability, including when the information available is incomplete.
Build across system boundaries. Work with other teams to agree clear interfaces and understand how changes affect the wider payment journey.
Improve the systems you operate. Strengthen testing and observability, diagnose production issues, and use what you learn to make services more dependable.
Help the team succeed. Contribute across workstreams, share domain knowledge and help other engineers grow through reviews, pairing and mentoring.
Our backend stack includes Java, Spring Boot, Kafka and PostgreSQL. You’ll deepen your understanding of funding, settlement and currency conversion, using that knowledge to make better product and engineering decisions. As the team’s scope grows, there will be opportunities to take on broader technical ownership and influence how we build.
What will you be doing?
Design, develop, and maintain highly scalable services in Java and Spring Boot within a microservices architecture.
Apply domain-driven design to build robust, scalable solutions.
Lead development efforts in event-driven architectures using Kafka or similar messaging systems.
Architect, design, and optimise relational databases (e.g., PostgreSQL) to ensure performance and scalability.
Collaborate with cross-functional teams to support partner integrations and expand the Wise payment platform globally.
Participate in code reviews, champion best coding practices and mentor junior engineers.
We’re looking for:
Hands-on experience building or making substantial contributions to large-scale distributed systems.
Strong backend engineering experience, including relational databases, event-driven systems and proficiency in an object-oriented language.
A product mindset: you can explain the customer problems behind your work, why your solution matters and how you assess whether it helps.
The ability to take ownership with a high degree of autonomy, make progress through ambiguity and involve others when their expertise is needed.
Strong collaboration and communication skills. You can explain technical decisions, work effectively across teams and contribute to your colleagues’ success.
Curiosity about the business domain and a willingness to learn how our partners use the products you build.
Useful additional experience includes:
Java, Spring Boot, Kafka or PostgreSQL.
Payments, financial technology, funding, settlement or foreign exchange.
Using product metrics and data to understand customer behaviour and guide decisions.
You can learn our technologies and banking domain here. If you bring the core engineering experience, ownership and curiosity described above, we’d like to hear from you.
Interested? Find out more:
Wise Engineering – https://medium.com/wise-engineering
What do we offer:
Starting salary: £87,000 - £111,000 + RSUs
For everyone, everywhere. We're people building money without borders — without judgement or prejudice, too. We believe teams are strongest when they are diverse, equitable and inclusive.
We're proud to have a truly international team, and we celebrate our differences.
Inclusive teams help us live our values and make sure every Wiser feels respected, empowered to contribute towards our mission and able to progress in their careers.
If you want to find out more about what it's like to work at Wise visit Wise.Jobs.
Keep up to date with life at Wise by following us on LinkedIn and Instagram.
For everyone, everywhere. We're people building money without borders — without judgement or prejudice, too. We believe teams are strongest when they are diverse, equitable and inclusive.
We're proud to have a truly international team, and we celebrate our differences.
Inclusive teams help us live our values and make sure every Wiser feels respected, empowered to contribute towards our mission and able to progress in their careers.
If you want to find out more about what it's like to work at Wise visit Wise.Jobs.
Keep up to date with life at Wise by following us on LinkedIn and Instagram.
Compensation: 87000 to 111000 (GBP) (YEARLY)
Wise enables international money transfers with lower fees by using a peer-to-peer model to match transfers across borders. It offers a multi-currency account for holding and managing money in different currencies and provides an API for businesses to integrate Wise transfers into their platforms. Unlike traditional banks that charge higher fees and poor exchange rates, Wise uses transparent, small-per-transaction fees and real-time exchange rates to reduce costs. Its approach differentiates it from competitors by emphasizing simplicity, cost transparency, and a broad API for business integration. The goal is to make cross-border payments cheaper, faster, and more transparent for individuals and businesses around the world.
Explore more opportunities at Wise