Head of Engineering ( Payment )

Job description

As the Head of Engineering for our Payment/Fintech division, you will oversee the development and optimization of our payment processing systems, including fraud detection, payout systems, and improving payment acceptance rates.

You will lead the engineering team, set strategic technical direction, and collaborate with other departments to ensure the platform is secure, scalable, and efficient.

Your experience in payment systems, fraud detection, and systems monitoring will be critical in safeguarding transactions and maintaining optimal platform performance.

Key Responsibilities

Supervisory & Leadership Responsibilities:

• Engineering Standards & Practices: Establish high engineering standards for the development of secure, scalable, and efficient payment and fraud detection systems, ensuring compliance with industry regulations.
• Team Leadership & Mentorship: Lead and mentor cross-functional engineering teams (including back-end, front-end, QA) with a focus on professional development, fostering innovation and ownership.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Collaborate with Product, Compliance, Risk, and Finance teams to ensure payment systems, fraud detection protocols, and monitoring tools are aligned with business needs and regulatory standards.
• Hiring & Team Development: Recruit, develop, and retain top talent in payment and fintech engineering, fostering a culture of continuous learning and professional growth.

Strategic Responsibilities:

• Payment Infrastructure Strategy: Lead the development of the payment platform's architecture, focusing on improving transaction performance, scaling systems for growth, and reducing downtime.
• Fraud Detection & Prevention: Develop, use, and implement advanced fraud detection rules and machine learning models to detect suspicious activities in real-time, ensuring compliance with KYC, AML, and regulatory standards.
  
  
• Project & Resource Management: Oversee the planning, development, and execution of payment and fraud detection features, ensuring projects are delivered on time, within scope, and within budget.
• Payout Systems: Manage the development and optimization of payout systems, ensuring smooth and timely payments to merchants and stakeholders.
• Risk Management & Security: Ensure robust security measures are implemented to protect sensitive payment data, working with compliance teams to maintain adherence to standards such as PCI-DSS and GDPR.

Industry Knowledge:

• Payment Processing Expertise: Lead the development and optimization of the payment processing system, reducing transaction failures and improving acceptance rates through smart routing, tokenization, and payment gateway integrations.
• Fraud Detection Rules: Implement and refine fraud detection rules that adapt to changing fraud patterns, leveraging machine learning and analytics to minimize false positives and enhance real-time threat detection.
• Payment Gateway Integration: Oversee the integration of multiple payment gateways, optimizing transaction routing and redundancy to ensure seamless processing.
• Acceptance Rate Enhancement: Use data and analysis to identify and implement strategies for increasing payment acceptance rates, reducing transaction declines, and improving customer satisfaction.
• Technical & Knowledge Responsibilities:
• Systems Monitoring & Performance Management: Establish advanced monitoring systems for real-time tracking of payment transactions, fraud detection activities, system health, and performance metrics.
  
  Ensure prompt issue resolution and minimal system downtime.
• Security & Compliance: Ensure the platform complies with regulatory standards, focusing on fraud detection, anti-money laundering (AML), and Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations.
  
  Collaborate with legal and compliance teams to maintain certifications like PCI-DSS.
• Data-Driven Decision Making: Leverage analytics and machine learning to monitor and predict system performance, fraud activities, and payment failures.
  
  Use data insights to continuously optimize the platform.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):

• Payment Acceptance Rates: Enhance acceptance rates by optimizing payment gateways and transaction routing, while minimizing fraud-related chargebacks.
• System Uptime & Performance: Maintain high system availability (99.9%+) through proactive monitoring, ensuring consistent performance with minimal downtime.

• Fraud Detection Efficiency: Improve fraud detection accuracy, reducing false positives while maintaining high levels of fraud prevention and detection.
• Customer Satisfaction: Deliver a seamless payment experience by reducing transaction failures and fraud-related issues, improving NPS scores and customer engagement.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in software engineering, with 5+ years in a leadership role within payment processing or fintech.
• Extensive experience with fraud detection systems, payment gateways, and high-volume transaction platforms.
• Expertise in payout systems, payment acceptance rate optimization, and secure transaction management.
• Strong knowledge of regulatory standards (PCI-DSS, AML, GDPR).
• Expertise in cloud-based infrastructure (AWS, Cloudflare, ..etc) and real-time system monitoring.
• Strong leadership skills with a focus on mentoring and growing high-performing teams.
• Ability to balance strategic thinking with hands-on problem-solving in a fast-paced fintech environment.
• Experience with fraud detection algorithms, machine learning models, and data-driven decision-making is a plus.

Required Skill Profession

Operations Specialties Managers