Director of Software Engineering (Java) Remote Ideally NI Are you an experienced engineering leader with a passion for building products that move money smarter, faster, and more securely? This is an exciting opportunity to join a fast-growing fintech scale-up thats redefining digital payments and shaping the future of merchant services. About the Company Our client is an innovative player in the payments space, delivering next-generation solutions for businesses across the UK, Europe, and beyond. Their platform empowers merchants with seamless payment processing, real-time insights, and secure, scalable infrastructure all designed around flexibility, compliance, and a frictionless user experience. With an ambitious roadmap and a mission to remove complexity from the world of payments, the company is now looking to grow its engineering leadership team to help scale and accelerate delivery. What Makes Them Different Merchant-first mentality: Building technology around real-world business needs. Autonomy and trust: Small teams, big ownership, and the freedom to innovate. Built to scale: Leveraging modern tools, practices, and cloud-native infrastructure to drive efficiency, security, and resilience. The Opportunity As Director of Software Engineering, youll lead a growing team of 1420 engineers responsible for building core payment products, merchant tools, and platform services. Youll operate as a player-coach balancing strategic leadership with technical insight and work closely with product, operations, and compliance teams to deliver reliable, scalable payment capabilities. Youll help shape the engineering culture, define best practices, and support the transition to faster, more agile delivery models while maintaining the quality and trust required in a regulated financial environment. Key Responsibilities Recruit, lead, and develop a high-performing engineering team focused on delivering payments and platform innovation. Guide teams across the full stack to deliver secure, scalable, and user-friendly products. Partner with Product and Compliance to design solutions that balance customer experience with risk and regulatory requirements. Foster a culture of ownership, transparency, and continuous improvement across all squads. Drive modern engineering practices including CI/CD, automated testing, and cloud-native development. Lead by example with hands-on technical oversight and sound architectural thinking. Support agile delivery processes that increase development velocity while maintaining stability. Champion a learning culture with mentoring, coaching, and regular feedback loops. Encourage a pragmatic approach to solving complex challenges around real-time processing, data integrity, and system reliability. Collaborate cross-functionally to coordinate large-scale feature development and product delivery. What You'll Bring 5+ years of engineering leadership experience, with at least 1 year at Director level or equivalent. Strong background in full-stack engineering, with fluency in object-oriented languages (e.g., Java, C#, C++). Proven success in scaling engineering teams and building high-impact, customer-facing products. Experience in the payments space, or in a regulated financial environment. Strong grasp of agile methodologies, lean delivery, and modern DevOps tooling. Excellent communication skills able to influence at all levels and collaborate across disciplines. A servant-leader mindset with a passion for developing people and teams. Confidence working in fast-paced, ambiguous environments with multiple stakeholders. Preferred Experience Hands-on experience with payment processing platforms, gateways, acquirers, or card networks. Familiarity with PCI-DSS compliance, transaction security, and data protection. Experience scaling systems with high availability and low latency requirements. Strong understanding of cloud infrastructure (e.g., AWS, GCP, or Azure) and containerised environments. Bachelors degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field. Whats on Offer A senior leadership role with ownership and influence across engineering strategy. The chance to shape world-class payment products in a growing fintech scale-up. A supportive, forward-thinking culture built around collaboration and learning. Flexible and hybrid working options. A meaningful opportunity to simplify how money moves and impact thousands of merchants in the process. Skills: Java Development engineering manager