Principal Engineer, Director Payments

Overview:

We are seeking a highly skilled, hands-on Director in Payments Technology to drive innovation, architecture, and delivery in a fast-paced environment. As a senior individual contributor, you will lead by example, applying deep technical expertise in payment systems to design, develop, and implement robust, scalable, and secure solutions. You will collaborate with cross-functional teams to transform the payments ecosystem, ensuring the organization remains at the forefront of technological advancements in the industry.

Role Description

• Work closely with engineers and develop best technical design and implement high quality software solutions.
• Provide engineering execution excellence, as well as technical vision and direction, to ensure the engineering team is aligned with the strategy of the bank.
• Mentor and coach junior developers to improve their technical skills.
• Conduct code reviews to ensure high quality code and adherence to best engineering practices.
• Actively participate in technical solutions and provide end to end ownership of technology solutions delivered to meet requirements to realize both functional and non-functional capabilities.
• Troubleshoot and resolve technical issues in a timely manner.
• Work closely with business analyst, architects & other stakeholders to understand and develop the solution.

Key Responsibilities

As a Principal Engineer in Payments Technology, you play a pivotal role in ensuring the development and maintenance of payment systems that are efficient, secure, and scalable. Your responsibilities would include both hands-on technical tasks and leadership duties to drive the success of the payments team.

Here are the key responsibilities:

Technical Leadership

• Own end-to-end technical design and development of payment platforms, ensuring high availability, scalability, and performance.
• Evaluate and implement emerging technologies to enhance the payments ecosystem.
• Provide technical direction to the development team, setting coding standards, best practices, and architectural guidelines.
• Oversee the implementation of complex payment systems, ensuring that they meet the requirements for reliability, performance, and scalability.
• Act as a technical advisor, solving complex engineering problems and making decisions on system architecture and design.

System Design and Development

• Design and develop key components of payment systems, including transaction processing, security, and integrations.
• Ensure that systems are optimized for high transaction volumes and low latency, especially for real-time or near-real-time payments.
• Review and approve designs, code, and pull requests, focusing on quality, efficiency, and security.

Security and Compliance

• Implement security best practices to protect payment data, including encryption, tokenization, and fraud prevention measures.
• Collaborate with security teams to conduct regular vulnerability assessments and audits.

Collaboration with Cross-Functional Teams

• Work closely with product managers, architects, and stakeholders to understand business requirements and translate them into technical specifications.
• Collaborate with DevOps, QA, and infrastructure teams to support deployment, testing, and monitoring of payment systems.

Performance Optimization and Scalability

• Identify and address performance bottlenecks, optimizing the system for speed and efficiency.
• Work on scaling strategies to handle growing transaction volumes, especially during peak usage periods.
• Implement caching, load balancing, and database optimization techniques as needed.

Mentorship and Team Development

• Mentor and guide junior and mid-level engineers, helping them improve their technical skills and understanding of payments technology.
• Conduct code reviews, provide feedback, and encourage best practices to ensure high-quality code.

Hands-On Contribution -

• Write, review, and optimize code in languages such as Java, Python, or Go.
• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines and DevOps practices.
• Ensure robust testing and automation frameworks to maintain quality.

Operational Excellence -

• Set up monitoring and logging systems for real-time tracking of payment transactions, system health, and performance metrics.
• Lead the troubleshooting and resolution of production issues, especially those related to payments processing and customer impact.
• Work on post-incident reviews to identify root causes, prevent recurrence, and improve the overall system reliability.

Experience & Skills required

• Bachelors degree or higher in Computer Science Engineering, or related fields.
• 15-20 years of hands-on development experience on Java/J2EE based Enterprise Applications.
• Experience in design/development of highly scalable, available, large scale monolith banking applications
• The candidate must demonstrate excellent software development skills in Java/J2EE technologies ( EJB, JMS ) , Spring, Spring Boot Microservices .
• Experience with Open-source technologies, framework, platforms, and tools
• Experience in web services ( SOAP,REST ) and xml technologies .
• Experience in database technologies SQL, Oracle.
• Experience with application servers Tomcat , Weblogic
• Good understanding of SRE practices and tools.
• Individuals who have a desire of self-improvement through experience, observation, introspection, reading and discussion
• Experience in Agile Software Development
• Has skills to conduct various performance test for e.g Load, spike, breakpoint, endurance to understand application/service limits.
• Has skills to orchestrate release workflow and implement CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins, Bitbucket, uDeploy, Docker, Kubernetes etc .
• Domain /Functional knowledge Banking, Financial Services, Payments
• Knowledge of BDD/TD methodologies and technologies like Cucumber, Test Automations using Java
• Experience in Development and Monitoring Tools (e.g. IntelliJ/Eclipse, Splunk, AppDynamics, New Relic)
• Experience in GCP (Google cloud platform) is desirable .
• Excellent communication, collaborationand problem-solving skills.

Qualification

• Bachelors degree(Preferably in science, computers, information technology)