Senior Engineering Manager, Payments

Polygon Labs is a global blockchain payments company building infrastructure to move money instantly and reliably. As a Senior Engineering Manager – Payments, you will lead the team to develop a modern payment system that integrates fiat and digital assets, while fostering a strong engineering culture and collaborating across various teams.

Responsibilities:

• Lead the buildout of a modern payments application from the ground up, working closely with the Head of Payments Engineering
• Manage and mentor engineers and DevOps teams focused on delivering scalable and reliable payment capabilities
• Collaborate cross-functionally with Product, Compliance, and Infrastructure teams to define and deliver enterprise-grade payment solutions
• Drive architecture and development across both fiat and blockchain-based payment systems
• Instill a strong engineering culture focused on automation, ownership, security, and operational excellence
• Stay ahead of the curve on blockchain innovation in the payments space and integrate emerging standards into the product roadmap

Requirements:

• 10+ years of experience in payments engineering, ideally spanning both traditional finance and digital assets
• Proven experience managing senior engineering teams and building high-throughput, low-latency, mission-critical transaction systems
• Deep expertise in designing microservices-based architectures, including service mesh and event-driven systems (e.g. Kafka, Axon, cloud-native pub/sub)
• Proficient in one or more backend languages (Java, Go, Python) and frameworks like Spring Boot, with strong understanding of active thread management for synchronous flows
• Experience with both synchronous and asynchronous integration patterns (REST, gRPC, pub-sub) for enterprise-scale partner integrations
• Strong architectural understanding of cloud-native systems on AWS and/or GCP, including edge networking (e.g. CDN, API gateways) through to internal subnet topology
• Hands-on experience with database and caching technologies including PostgreSQL, MongoDB, ElasticSearch, Redis, and Hazelcast
• Solid understanding of data architecture patterns, including data lakes, data warehouses (e.g. Snowflake, Databricks) and event-based ingestion pipelines
• Strong understanding of both centralized and decentralized payment infrastructure, including traditional rails (ACH, SEPA, card networks) and blockchain-based flows (wallets, custody, stablecoins)
• Track record of delivering compliant, secure systems in regulated environments, with an understanding of KYC, AML, and other key controls
• Excellent communication and leadership skills, with the ability to align and influence technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Experience working in fintech, neobanks, or real-time transaction processing environments
• Experience with stablecoins, CBDCs, or tokenized assets
• Hands-on exposure to Ethereum or other smart contract platforms
• Experience working with global regulators or participating in payment certification processes
• Deep knowledge of cloud-native, event-driven, and distributed system architectures
• Passion for automation, developer productivity, and engineering excellence