Staff Software Engineer, Scale

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.

Hiring Location: London (Hybrid Mode)

Total Compensation: 190,000 to 270,000 GBP

About the Team

• Embedded Finance Platform: Build and maintain the multi-tenant infrastructure powering companies like Rippling, Navan, Qantas, and SHEIN. You'll architect systems that aggregate requests from all platform customers, meeting enterprise-grade SLAs for availability, latency, and throughput while handling cross-data-center scenarios.

• Cross-Domain Product Features: Own features that require synthesizing knowledge across business, regulatory, and technical domains—areas where no single existing team has full coverage, like tax systems, compliance-driven flows, or monetization tools.

• Solutions Architecture: Design integrations for enterprise prospects by translating their business requirements into technical solutions. Your architectural decisions directly influence deal outcomes—from enabling multi-million dollar contracts to differentiating in competitive sales.

What you'll do

• Build Something That Matters: Your work directly impacts how millions of people use financial services. Companies like Rippling and SHEIN rely on infrastructure you'll build. You're not just writing code—you're shaping how businesses embed finance.

• Grow Beyond Engineering: You'll develop expertise that extends beyond technical skills: understanding customer business models, navigating regulatory landscapes, influencing enterprise sales. This is career growth that prepares you for technical leadership, product roles, or even founding your own company.

• Join a World-Class Team: Work with exceptional engineers, product thinkers, and designers across the globe. At Airwallex, you'll be challenged, supported, and surrounded by people who are building something meaningful together.

Minimum Qualifications

• Have 8+ years of software engineering experience (8+ for Staff) in Java/Spring Boot

• Excel at making the right level of abstraction—balancing flexibility and simplicity in system/component design

• Demonstrate clean communication across technical and non-technical stakeholders

• Make pragmatic decisions on when to optimize for performance vs. velocity based on business impact

• Thrive in cross-functional environments spanning Product, Design, Compliance, and Sales

• Design for scale, maintainability, and production excellence

• Have led multi-team initiatives with measurable technical or business impact

Preferred qualifications:

• Fintech, payments, or regulated industry experience

• High-scale performance tuning (100k+ QPS, large user bases, strict latency SLAs)

• Multi-tenant SaaS or platform architecture background

• Proficiency with PostgreSQL, Redis, Kafka, or cloud platforms (AWS/GCP/Azure)

• Experience with OAuth2.0, API design, or developer documentation

• Cross-region deployment or data residency compliance experience

• Solutions engineering or customer-facing technical experience

Applicant Safety Policy: Fraud and Third-Party Recruiters

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.

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.