Staff Software Engineer UK

Unstoppable starts with people. The future of payments is being built today, and at Paymentology, we are looking for people who want to help shape it. We power card issuing for leading banks, fintechs and digital brands across the globe, and as we continue to grow, we are looking for curious, ambitious people who thrive on solving complex challenges, embrace innovation and want to make a tangible impact at global scale. We're looking for a Staff Software Engineer to provide technical leadership across multiple teams and engineering domains. As an individual contributor with organisation-wide influence, you'll shape technical strategy, guide architectural decisions, and help teams build reliable, scalable, and maintainable systems that power millions of payment transactions every day. You'll work closely with Engineering, Product, and Operations to solve complex technical challenges, establish engineering standards, mentor senior engineers, and enable teams to make better technical decisions with confidence. What you get to do: - Drive technical strategy across engineering domains and cross-team initiatives. - Shape scalable architectures that support Paymentology's long-term product and business goals. - Translate complex technical challenges into clear, practical solutions. - Establish engineering standards, architectural patterns, and best practices across teams. - Identify and mitigate long-term risks around reliability, scalability, security, and maintainability. - Partner with Engineering, Product, and Operations to influence technical roadmaps and delivery. - Mentor senior engineers and strengthen technical leadership across the organisation. - Lead initiatives that improve engineering quality, testing, observability, and operational excellence. - Contribute hands-on to critical systems where your expertise delivers the greatest impact. What it takes to succeed: - Extensive experience designing and operating highly available, distributed backend systems. - Proven success leading technical initiatives across multiple teams. - Strong expertise in software architecture, system design, and engineering best practices. - Experience with microservices, APIs, event-driven architectures, relational databases, and cloud platforms (preferably AWS). - Knowledge of CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, containerisation, observability, and automated testing. - Strong communication skills with the ability to influence technical decisions and mentor experienced engineers. - Professional fluency in English. - Java experience is highly valued, while experience in payments, fintech, or other regulated environments is beneficial but not essential. Education and Experience: - Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience. - Typically 10+ years of experience designing and delivering complex distributed systems. - Experience shaping technical strategy, mentoring engineers, and delivering cloud-native software at scale. At Paymentology, we believe that making a difference starts with the people behind the work. You will be part of a diverse, global team of Paymentologists who are united by a shared mission to advance the world through payments. This is an opportunity to contribute to meaningful work, collaborate across markets and functions, and help shape the future of a business with global reach and real impact. We are an equal opportunity employer committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace where everyone can thrive. We welcome applications from people of all backgrounds and do not discriminate on any unlawful ground, including race, colour, ethnicity, sex, gender, pregnancy, marital status, family responsibility, age, disability, sexual orientation, religion, belief, language or HIV status. Paymentology will never request any form of payment from applicants at any stage of our recruitment process, including for applications, interviews, training or job placements. If anyone asks you for money while claiming to act on behalf of Paymentology, please treat this as fraudulent and do not make any payment. All legitimate Paymentology vacancies are advertised via our official careers https://www.paymentology.com/about-us/careers page , and our recruitment emails are sent only from official Paymentology domains.