Head of Payments & Identity
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 Payments & Identity based in Germany.
As Head of Payments & Identity, you will build and lead a major engineering domain responsible for the complete customer and money lifecycle. You will oversee approximately 30 engineers and engineering leaders across Payments, KYC/Identity, Anti-Fraud, and Core Ledger. The role combines organisational leadership, technical strategy, architecture, and operational excellence in a highly transactional environment. You will shape how customer identity, fraud prevention, payment processing, and financial accounting work together as one reliable ecosystem. You will partner closely with Product, Finance, Compliance, Risk, Operations, and external providers to balance conversion, security, regulatory requirements, and financial integrity. This is a high-impact leadership opportunity to modernize business-critical systems and establish scalable engineering practices across a complex international environment.
Accountabilities
Build, scale, and lead the engineering domain covering Payments, KYC/Identity, Anti-Fraud, and Core Ledger.
Lead approximately 30 engineers and engineering leaders, defining organisational structures, team boundaries, leadership models, ownership areas, and reporting lines.
Establish the domain strategy, target architecture, and execution roadmap in close partnership with Product, Finance, Compliance, Risk, and Operations.
Ensure reliable interaction across the complete customer and money lifecycle, connecting KYC data, fraud controls, payment flows, and accurate financial records.
Improve the speed, quality, reliability, and predictability of integrations with payment service providers, KYC/AML vendors, and other external partners, particularly across regions with complex or inconsistent APIs.
Establish standards for resilient and observable external integrations, including fallback mechanisms, incident response processes, security controls, and integration quality.
Balance customer onboarding and payment conversion objectives with Anti-Fraud, AML, data protection, transaction monitoring, and traceability requirements.
Ensure Finance, Compliance, Risk, and Operations teams have reliable data, systems, and internal tools for reconciliation, investigations, exception management, and reporting.
Establish engineering standards across the domain covering architecture, software quality, secure development, observability, reliability, and continuous improvement.
Drive the modernisation of business-critical systems and support the evolution toward a central, reliable, and authoritative Ledger architecture.
Define and monitor domain-level KPIs covering conversion, reliability, processing speed, fraud losses, reconciliation accuracy, engineering delivery, and cost efficiency.
Identify systemic technical and organisational risks and ensure they are addressed through sustainable architectural, process, and leadership improvements.
Align multiple senior stakeholders and external providers around competing priorities, ensuring clear ownership and effective execution.
Proven experience leading a sizeable engineering organisation or multiple cross-functional engineering teams, ideally involving approximately 30 or more people and including Engineering Managers, Team Leads, or senior technical leaders.
Demonstrated experience building or significantly scaling an engineering function, domain, or complex technology platform rather than solely managing an established organisation.
Strong systems-thinking capabilities, with the ability to connect customer journeys, product flows, technical architecture, operational processes, risk controls, and financial outcomes.
Extensive experience leading complex integrations and business-critical systems where correctness, availability, security, reliability, and auditability are essential.
Strong engineering and architectural foundations, with the ability to challenge technical decisions, guide senior technical leaders, and identify systemic risks.
Proven ability to improve engineering delivery predictability, software quality, technical standards, and operational effectiveness across multiple teams.
Strong stakeholder-management skills and the ability to align Product, Finance, Compliance, Risk, Operations, engineering teams, and external technology providers.
Fluent English and excellent communication skills, with the ability to communicate complex technical topics clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Experience in payments, fintech, banking, brokerage, crypto, wallets, marketplaces, or another high-volume transactional environment is highly valuable.
Experience integrating multiple regional payment service providers or financial providers, particularly in markets where integrations are less standardised than major global platforms.
Experience with KYC/Identity, AML, transaction monitoring, payment fraud prevention, reconciliation, or Ledger systems is a strong advantage.
Experience migrating fragmented or legacy accounting components toward a central Ledger or financial source of truth is beneficial.
Experience developing internal tools and workflows for Finance, Compliance, Risk, or operational back-office teams is a plus.
Strong organisational, strategic, and people-leadership capabilities, combined with a hands-on understanding of engineering and architecture.
20 paid vacation days per year.
10 paid sick leave days per year.
Public holidays according to the approved company holiday calendar.
Medical insurance.
Fully remote working opportunities.
Dedicated professional education budget to support ongoing development.
Language learning budget.
Wellness budget covering eligible expenses such as gym memberships, sports equipment, and related activities.
Opportunity to lead a sizeable international engineering organisation and shape a critical technology domain.
Significant scope to influence architecture, organisational design, engineering culture, and long-term technical strategy.