About this role
Payoneer is building critical financial workflows and distributed platforms that empower businesses, professionals, and enterprises to participate in the global economy through seamless cross-border payments. The engineering organization operates at significant scale, connecting customers and partners in over 190 countries and territories with a strong focus on reliability, security, and scalability.
Backend engineering leadership is needed to define architectural direction and drive the evolution of large-scale distributed systems across the organization. The selected individual contributor will work on complex technical challenges, champion an AI-first approach to software engineering, and explore emerging technologies like the Model Context Protocol. Mentoring senior engineers, shaping technical strategy, and influencing cross-functional teams without direct authority are central daily functions of the position.
Ideal candidates bring extensive experience designing backend platforms and a proven ability to translate ambiguous problems into scalable technical solutions. A combination of deep distributed systems expertise, product thinking, and a demonstrated interest in LLMs and agentic workflows will help someone thrive in this global environment.
What you will do
- Define and drive the technical and architectural vision for large-scale backend systems and distributed financial platforms.
- Design and build highly scalable, resilient, secure, and fault-tolerant distributed systems supporting global financial infrastructure.
- Champion an AI-first approach to software engineering by identifying opportunities to leverage LLMs, AI agents, and intelligent developer tooling.
- Explore, prototype, and drive the adoption of emerging technologies including Model Context Protocol and agent-based architectures.
- Influence technical strategy across multiple engineering teams and organizational boundaries without relying solely on direct authority.
- Mentor and coach engineering leads, senior engineers, and architects to help raise the technical bar across the organization.
What you need
- Extensive experience designing and building large-scale distributed systems and backend platforms.
- Strong expertise in backend engineering, system architecture, APIs, microservices, data-intensive systems, and cloud-native architectures.
- Deep understanding of distributed systems concepts such as consistency, availability, fault tolerance, concurrency, and event-driven architectures.
- Proven experience leading architecture and technical strategy across multiple engineering teams or complex technology domains.
- Experience operating systems at significant scale with strong requirements around availability, performance, security, and reliability.
- Experience with AI and LLM technologies alongside a demonstrated interest in building AI-first engineering systems and workflows.
Nice to have
- Familiarity with AI agents, Model Context Protocol, tool calling, or agentic workflows
Skills and tech stack
Questions candidates ask
What kind of systems and projects will I work on?
You will work on some of Payoneer's most complex technical challenges, defining architectural direction and building distributed financial platforms. The role involves shaping critical infrastructure that handles global payments, compliance, multi-currency workflows, and workforce management.
What is the expectation regarding AI and emerging technologies?
The position requires an AI-first mindset to identify opportunities for using AI, LLMs, automation, and agentic technologies across the software development lifecycle. You will also explore and build systems using emerging protocols like the Model Context Protocol.
How does leadership influence cross-functional and distributed teams?
You will act as a trusted advisor to engineering and product leaders, influencing technical strategy across multiple teams and organizational boundaries without relying on direct authority. The work requires collaborating closely with geographically distributed functions including engineering, product, security, and infrastructure.