Head of Engineering, Payment Gateway

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Head of Engineering, Payment Gateway based in Spain.

This is a senior engineering leadership opportunity to shape the technology behind a high-scale digital payments platform serving millions of businesses and individuals. You will own the technical strategy, architecture, and engineering roadmap across payment acceptance, payouts, commerce tools, and developer-facing capabilities. The platform processes significant transaction volumes and is expanding toward multi-currency and international markets. You will lead multiple engineering organizations through experienced managers while setting high standards for reliability, security, scalability, and engineering quality. A major focus will be creating an exceptional developer experience through APIs, SDKs, documentation, and seamless integrations. This role is ideal for a hands-on technology leader who combines deep Java expertise with strong organizational leadership and payments experience.

Accountabilities:

As Head of Engineering, you will provide technical and organizational leadership across a large-scale payment gateway platform, balancing long-term architecture with operational excellence and business priorities.

• Own the overall technical strategy, architecture, and engineering roadmap across the payment platform and its core capability areas.
• Lead multiple engineering teams through Engineering Managers, establishing quality standards and strengthening organizational capabilities.
• Own the developer experience end-to-end, including APIs, SDKs, documentation, integration workflows, and developer-facing tools.
• Drive the platform's evolution toward multi-currency capabilities and international market expansion.
• Ensure high standards of platform reliability, scalability, security, and resilience within a regulated financial environment.
• Guide the architecture and operation of high-throughput, distributed transactional systems.
• Partner with Product, Commercial, Operations, and other functions to align technical investments with strategic business objectives.
• Hire, mentor, develop, and retain Engineering Managers and senior engineering talent.
• Establish scalable engineering practices, systems, and mechanisms that improve quality and reduce organizational friction.
• Promote a culture of ownership, technical excellence, transparency, urgency, and customer focus.

Requirements:

The ideal candidate is an experienced engineering executive who combines significant hands-on software engineering expertise with a proven track record of managing engineering organizations through other leaders.

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including at least 5 years in engineering leadership roles.
• 5+ years of hands-on, production-level experience writing and shipping Java code as a practicing engineer.
• Recent experience actively working with production Java code, rather than solely overseeing teams that use Java.
• At least 5 years of experience managing Engineering Managers and leading organizations through other engineering leaders.
• Proven experience leading multiple engineering teams within a scaling organization.
• Strong background in payments, fintech, or financial services, with a practical understanding of payment flows and regulatory requirements.
• Deep knowledge of API-first products, developer platforms, and API integrations.
• Strong backend engineering expertise, particularly with high-throughput, distributed, and transactional systems.
• Experience owning or building developer-facing products used externally through APIs, SDKs, sandboxes, or integration platforms.
• Experience building or operating payment infrastructure such as payment gateways, hosted checkout, payment links, or payment routing is highly desirable.
• Experience with technologies such as Java, Spring, Spring Boot, Docker, Kubernetes, PostgreSQL, DynamoDB, Elasticsearch, and AWS-based microservices is an advantage.
• Strong strategic thinking, organizational judgment, and ability to make clear technical trade-offs.
• Customer-focused, highly accountable, candid, collaborative, and comfortable operating with urgency in a fast-moving environment.
• Strong commitment to integrity, transparency, continuous improvement, and developing high-performing engineering teams.

Benefits:

• Opportunity to own critical payment infrastructure supporting thousands of businesses and developers.
• Work on systems processing hundreds of billions of dollars in transaction value annually.
• High-impact role at the intersection of payments, fintech, distributed systems, and international expansion.
• Opportunity to shape a platform moving toward multi-currency and multi-market capabilities.
• Fast-paced, technically demanding environment with significant engineering ownership.
• Mission-driven work focused on expanding access to financial services across high-growth markets.
• Opportunity to lead and develop multiple engineering teams and senior technical leaders.
• Remote work opportunity based in Spain.