Senior Software Engineer, Data Platform & AI Enablement

ABOUT AIRWALLEX 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 https://www.airwallex.com/en-us/operating-principles to see it in full. HOW YOU'LL MAKE IMPACT The Knowledge Platform is building the infrastructure that connects Airwallex’s data, real-time systems and AI capabilities. You’ll help create the distributed foundations that enable reliable data processing, intelligent products and global financial infrastructure. - Architect and build core infrastructure components, from foundational storage through high-availability service layers. - Lead technical decisions and custom development for high-performance distributed systems supporting real-time AI enablement and global financial data. - Improve system performance across state management, checkpointing, memory management and exactly-once semantics, helping deliver accurate, low-latency processing at scale. - Build and integrate the Knowledge Platform, including scalable vector indexing, agentic workflows and real-time data streaming. - Own the full software development lifecycle for batch and streaming systems processing petabytes of data across 30+ global regions. - Raise engineering quality through shared tooling, SDKs and automation frameworks that improve productivity across engineering. - Mentor engineers through design reviews, technical guidance and delivery leadership. You'll work from our Seattle office three days a week. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR ESSENTIALS - 5+ years of experience building and operating large-scale distributed systems or infrastructure platforms. - Strong understanding of computer science fundamentals, including distributed systems, memory management and networking protocols. - Proficiency in Java, Kotlin or Go. - Hands-on experience with, or a strong desire to work deeply in, technologies such as Kafka, Flink, Spark, Kubernetes or OLAP engines. - Experience taking complex technical challenges from initial design through production stability. - Experience with performance tuning and systems internals, including state management, checkpointing and exactly-once semantics. - A track record of providing technical leadership through architecture decisions, design reviews or mentorship. - Curiosity about AI/ML infrastructure and real-time systems, with a focus on creating tangible business impact. YOU'LL THRIVE HERE IF - You're comfortable owning the roadmap yourself. - You're comfortable with ambiguity. Give you a problem, not a prescription, and you'll run with it. - 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 connect dots across functions and hold the big picture without losing grip on the details. - You simplify complexity rather than hiding behind it. LEARN MORE ABOUT YOUR TEAM The Knowledge Platform sits at the foundation of Airwallex’s Data and AI strategy. We are evolving traditional data infrastructure into knowledge infrastructure—turning structured and unstructured information into trusted, reusable context that helps people and AI systems make better decisions and take action. You’ll build the platform end to end, from core technologies such as Databricks, Clickhouse, Spark, and Kafka to real-time analytics, knowledge retrieval and indexing, model infrastructure, agent capabilities, and AI interaction history. You’ll also develop the evaluation, annotation, feedback, governance, permission, and freshness frameworks required to operate AI reliably at global financial scale. Our mission is making this ecosystem truly agent-ready. That means enabling teams to explore data through natural language, investigate business drivers in real time, and give AI systems secure access to the context and capabilities they need to support decisions and execute workflows. If you want to build the foundation that turns Airwallex’s data into knowledge, knowledge into intelligence, and intelligence into measurable business impact, this is where that work happens. 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 http://airwallex.com email address. Please apply only through careers.airwallex.com http://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 me