Staff Software Engineer, Spend

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 As a Staff Software Engineer on the Spend team, you'll lead the architecture and development of backend systems that support Airwallex's financial operating layer for modern businesses. You'll shape technical direction across corporate cards, expenses, bills, and procurement while helping build reliable financial workflows at scale. - Lead the architecture, design, and evolution of complex backend systems that power Airwallex's Spend products, including corporate cards, expenses, bills, and procurement. - Drive cross-team technical initiatives and shape the long-term engineering strategy for scalable, secure, and reliable financial workflows. - Own backend services end to end, from technical discovery and design through implementation, testing, deployment, observability, and ongoing maintenance. - Raise the bar on system design, API quality, testing, reliability, and performance while helping teams make sound technical trade-offs. - Mentor engineers and collaborate closely with Product, Design, Infrastructure, Risk, and Compliance to deliver dependable solutions for global businesses. You'll work from our Singapore office five days a week. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR Essentials - A bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field. - 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, including experience in technical leadership roles. - Proven experience architecting and scaling backend systems and APIs in production. - Strong computer science fundamentals, including data structures, algorithms, and distributed systems. - Expertise in at least one backend language, such as Java, Kotlin, Go, or Python. - Deep understanding of REST API design and modern backend frameworks, such as Spring Boot. - Experience with cloud infrastructure, such as AWS or GCP, and container orchestration tools such as Kubernetes. - Strong commitment to code quality, reliability, and performance. Preferred - Experience leading cross-team initiatives and influencing technical direction at a system-wide level. - Proficiency with observability and monitoring tools, such as Grafana, Prometheus, or Splunk. - Familiarity with security and compliance considerations in financial services. - A passion for mentoring and helping others grow. 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 enjoy working closely with people across multiple countries and time zones as part of one connected, global team, including flexing your hours occasionally to make that connection work. LEARN MORE ABOUT YOUR TEAM The Spend team builds Airwallex's financial operating layer for modern businesses, bringing together corporate cards, expenses, bills, and procurement on top of our accounts, payments, and issuing infrastructure. We're building AI that makes real decisions about expenses, policies, and payments, aiming to get 95%+ of submissions down to one click, while every workflow still has to hold up across multi-entity businesses, currencies, and audit trails. This is a team for people who want broad ownership across product, data, and AI, while the roadmap is still being defined. If you want to build production AI for real financial workflows that directly change how businesses operate, 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 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 requ