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£96K–£178K/yrHybridFull-timeStaff / PrincipalEngineering
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You apply directly with the employer. We never charge applicants.
£96K–£178K/yr
Published by the employer
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 2,300 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 to see it in full.
Hiring Location: London (Hybrid Mode)
Total Compensation: 190,000 to 270,000 GBP
About the Team
The Founders’ Lab is Airwallex’s elite internal innovation hub. Operating like an agile startup backed by our global network, we partner directly with our CEO and Co-Founder to architect, build, and ship next-generation Fintech AI Innovations and 0-to-1 product lines.
We don't build in isolation, nor do we over-engineer for theoretical problems. Our mandate is high-velocity validation: we take raw, ambitious, and ambiguous concepts from the executive suite, build the MVP, and deploy it onto our global financial infrastructure to test with real users.
We look for High-Agency Builders. There are no layers of middle management or rigid ticketing queues here. You will hold complete end-to-end technical and product ownership—wearing the hat of a Product Manager to define the what and the why, and acting as a lead engineer to build the how.
What You’ll Do
Collaborate on 0-to-1 Products: Partner with the CEO and global leadership to translate high-level strategic visions and AI capabilities into functional, market-ready software.
Drive Fintech AI Innovation: Lead the technical evaluation and implementation of emerging AI technologies and intelligent workflows, figuring out how they can best serve our financial platform.
Balance Speed with Maintainability: Make pragmatic architectural decisions. You know when to build a quick prototype to validate an idea, and how to structure it so that it can be successfully handed off and scaled if it succeeds.
Own the Full Stack: While steering backend architecture and systems design, you are comfortable working across the entire stack to deliver complete solutions, from data models to user interfaces.
Bootstrap Future Teams: Help lay the technical foundation for successful incubation projects, ensuring a smooth transition as they grow into standalone product lines within Airwallex.
Minimum Qualifications
10+ years of software engineering experience, with a background that includes operating at a Staff level or leading technical direction in fast-paced, greenfield environments.
Strong Product Sense: You look at engineering through a commercial lens. You care about user experience, business impact, and why a product is being built, not just the code itself.
Comfort with Ambiguity: You enjoy working in spaces where requirements aren't fully defined yet, and you can independently map out technical specs from high-level direction.
Pragmatic Problem Solver: You are resourceful, self-directed, and focused on delivering outcomes, finding efficient ways to work through technical or institutional blockers.
Deep Backend & Full-Stack Capabilities: Solid fundamentals in high-performance backend ecosystems alongside the practical ability to build frontend interfaces when moving quickly.
Clear Communication: Ability to discuss deep technical trade-offs with core infrastructure teams and present clear, simplified product outcomes to executive stakeholders.
Preferred Qualifications
Experience building software that leverages Generative AI, LLMs, or automated agent workflows.
Experience in fintech, payments, multi-currency ledgering, or regulated financial systems.
Prior experience as a founding engineer, tech lead of an R&D team, or technical co-founder.
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 email address. Please apply only through 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.
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 requires accommodation, please let us know.