Senior Staff Engineer, Payments Compliance

Role Overview

• Own the end-to-end system design vision for the Compliance organization, setting the architectural direction for an engineering organization of nearly 30 engineers across multiple teams.
• Drive foundational architectural shifts, including the move from an account-centric model to a customer-centric one — rethinking how we model identity, risk, and enforcement across the platform.
• Lead the technical strategy for expanding KYC capabilities — supporting small and medium businesses, reimagining business onboarding and account structures, enabling KYC through third-party APIs, and extending verification to third-party payees.
• Architect systems that adapt to the evolving digital identity landscape — including new verification standards, government-issued digital credentials, and shifting privacy regulations — without requiring costly re-platforming.
• Ensure our technical foundations are flexible enough to absorb unforeseen regulatory mandates with aggressive timelines, without destabilizing existing systems or requiring disproportionate engineering investment.
• Partner with technical leaders across multiple organizations to drive alignment on shared capabilities and cohesive system design, reducing duplication and compounding technical debt.
• Work closely with Product, Design, Policy, Legal, Operations, and other cross-functional partners as part of a globally distributed team to define and ship impactful features.
• Lead and mentor engineers — both inside and outside your immediate team — raising the technical bar and developing the next generation of technical leaders within Compliance.
• Advocate for and drive systemic improvements by identifying patterns to streamline development, reduce toil, and increase technical quality and operational excellence over time.

Requirements

• 15+ years of technical experience, with 10+ years of relevant industry experience in a fast-paced tech environment.
• Prior knowledge of Regulatory Compliance standards (AML, KYC, sanctions screening) and demonstrated experience designing and implementing those controls at scale.
• Proven track record of setting technical direction and architectural strategy for a large engineering organization, with the ability to drive alignment across organizational boundaries.
• Experience designing systems that span multiple teams and domains, with a focus on cohesion, reusability, and long-term maintainability over initiative-by-initiative solutions.
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to influence senior technical and non-technical stakeholders across the company.
• Strong problem solver with deep experience operating and leading on-call for production systems at scale.
• Technical leadership: hands-on experience leading large project teams, making high-stakes design tradeoffs, and translating regulatory requirements into scalable system architectures.
• BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science, a related field, or equivalent work experience.
• Proficiency in one or more back-end server languages (Java/Ruby/Go/C++/etc.)
• Deep understanding of architectural patterns of high-scale web and data applications.
• Be future looking — we might be focused on immediate regulations, but need to build for the long term. You think in terms of platforms, not projects.
• End-to-end ownership mentality that transcends team boundaries, with the credibility and judgment to make decisions that carry direct financial and legal implications.

Tech Stack

• Java
• Ruby
• Go

Benefits

• This role may also be eligible for bonus, equity, benefits, and Employee Travel Credits.