Staff Software Engineer, Data Platform

US - Seattle · 8+ years experience · Full-time · Hybrid · Posted Sep 28, 2026

At a glance

Airwallex is the AI-native financial operating system for a real-time, intelligent economy. More than 676,000 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 https://www.airwallex.com/en-us/operating-principles to see it in full.

As a Staff Software Engineer for the Data Platform, you will oversee the strategy, architecture, development, and operation of Airwallex's data and AI platforms.
You will play a pivotal role in influencing data-driven and AI-powered decision-making processes while building and mentoring a high-performing team.

Spearhead the identification and resolution of Airwallex-wide challenges using cutting-edge data platform solutions.
Provide visionary technical direction, fostering a community within Airwallex's data realm, and actively leading in solving complex problems hands-on.
Advocate for best practices across the data platform, instilling a culture of craftsmanship and innovation.
Mentor the data platform team, nurturing both technical and professional development.

A minimum of 8 years of experience in Data Platform or an equivalent combination of work and academic exposure in a quantitative field.
Proven experience leading company-wide initiatives across multiple teams or influencing tech roadmap planning.
Effective collaboration with diverse teams and stakeholders to drive tangible business outcomes.
Demonstrated ability to balance execution and velocity with in-depth research, statistical understanding, and scalable design.
Track record of mentoring and investing in the development of scientists, engineers, and peers.
Experience providing technical leadership on significant projects, covering ETL frameworks, metrics stores, infrastructure management, and data security.
Proficiency in building, deploying, and maintaining reliable multi-geographical data pipelines at scale.
Familiarity with workflow or orchestration frameworks such as Airflow, DBT, etc.

Hands-on design experience in crafting data processing patterns for a modern Lakehouse architecture.
Contribute to the design and development of standard framework modules, high-performance services, and client libraries for big data using tools like GCP, Databricks, BigQuery, DataProc, Kafka, Kubernetes, Spark, DataFlow, Google Cloud Storage, and Airflow.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills tailored for diverse audiences (leadership, users, company-wide).
Ability to rapidly evaluate various technologies and conduct proof of concepts to drive architecture design.
Experience thriving in a complex environment