Staff Software Engineer
Airwallex
Staff Software Engineer
Airwallex
Runs global payments and accounts for businesses
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 2,700 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.
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.
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.
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'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.
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.
To protect you from recruitment scams, please be aware that Airwallex will not ask for bank details, sensitive ID numbers (i.e. passport), or any form of payment during the application or interview process. All official communication will come from an @airwallex.com email address. Please apply only through careers.airwallex.com or our official LinkedIn page.
Airwallex does not accept unsolicited resumes from search firms/recruiters. Airwallex will not pay any fees to search firms/recruiters if a candidate is submitted by a search firm/recruiter unless an agreement has been entered into with respect to specific open position(s). Search firms/recruiters submitting resumes to Airwallex on an unsolicited basis shall be deemed to accept this condition, regardless of any other provision to the contrary.
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.
Airwallex runs a financial platform for businesses that sell, buy and operate across borders, from startups to large enterprises. Its multi-currency accounts let customers receive and hold money locally, then pay overseas suppliers without converting every sale into their home currency. Businesses also use its corporate cards and expense controls to manage spending, while online sellers accept customer payments through its checkout tools. Finance teams work in a web app, and developers embed the services in other software; Airwallex earns transaction fees and charges for paid software plans. Founded in Melbourne in 2015, Airwallex has dual headquarters in Singapore and San Francisco.
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