Director of Engineering, Banking and Payments Platform

You'll be joining a team within an organization undergoing significant business transformation, especially in the digital space and our approach to financial services. This means you'll have the opportunity to shape the future of automotive financing and our relationship with customers through technology, including managing the platforms that handle billing and subscriptions which are key to our customer relationships and recurring revenue streams. You'll lead world-class engineering teams, both employees and partners, often distributed globally, to deliver innovative and robust solutions.

While leadership presence in our Chennai / Bangalore offices in India is key for team management and vendor engagement, this role involves significant collaboration with Product Teams and stakeholders across different regions, including the US and Europe. The strategic impact and collaboration span globally.

Key Responsibilities:

Think of your responsibilities falling into a few core buckets: Leadership & Team Building, Technical Strategy & Execution, Platform Delivery, Banking & Payments Domain Expertise & Compliance, and Cross-Functional Collaboration.

• Engineering Leadership & Team Management: You will lead, mentor, and grow multiple engineering teams, including potentially managing other managers, working on various components of our banking, payments, billing, and subscription solutions (like processing, reconciliation, reporting, integrations, core banking features, billing cycles, subscription management). This includes leading and managing a large engineering organization, comprising a significant team size (currently close to 75 employees in India within the Payments/Billing teams alone, plus integrated services and direct management of the Bank team), along with managing global purchased services partners across different locations. You should have proven experience managing teams of this scale or larger. Foster a strong team culture centered around technical excellence, collaboration, ownership, and continuous improvement. Define effective team structures, roles, and responsibilities to maximize productivity and scalability. Oversee hiring, performance management, and career development for engineers within your domain. Champion best practices in software development, testing, deployment, and operations, using agile methodologies. Effectively manage team priorities, backlogs, and help remove roadblocks to drive key business results. Lead the management of global supplier partners, focusing on cost-effectiveness and delivery. Demonstrate empathy and care for your teams, guiding them on skill advancement, objective setting, and performance assessments.
• Technical Strategy & Architecture: Define and drive the technical strategy and long-term architectural vision for the Banking, Enterprise Payments, Billing, and Subscription Platforms, ensuring it aligns seamlessly with overall business goals and technology strategy. Make critical technical decisions regarding system design, technology choices, and architectural patterns to build modern, scalable, secure, and high-availability systems. Oversee the technical roadmap, ensuring it supports product initiatives while actively managing technical debt. Provide technical leadership in designing and delivering system improvements on both modern and legacy technology stacks. Ensure the platform is architected for high availability, disaster recovery, and fault tolerance. Be familiar with hands-on development of reusable solution patterns, potentially leveraging advanced cloud tools (like those on GCP), and guide your teams on their effective use.
• Platform Delivery & Execution: Oversee the end-to-end software development lifecycle (SDLC) for the platforms, from planning and development through deployment and operations. Ensure the timely and high-quality delivery of platform features and capabilities across Banking, Payments, Billing, and Subscription domains, working closely with Product Management. Implement and continuously improve agile development processes and methodologies, building, validating, and releasing software early and often in a dynamic environment. Monitor platform performance, reliability, and operational health, establishing robust monitoring and alerting systems. Lead and manage complex projects with aggressive timelines, driving continuous business value. Lead communication of status, issues, and risks to key stakeholders.
• Banking & Payments Domain Expertise & Compliance: Serve as a key leader in ensuring the platforms adhere to all relevant industry standards and regulations. This requires deep expertise in the compliance and regulatory framework critical for banking and payments (e.g., PCI DSS, AML, KYC, GDPR/data privacy). You must have significant experience with financial regulations, experience in security testing, compliance requirements (including data privacy, access controls, and monitoring requirements), and proven ability to handle global audits and work effectively with global audit teams. Work closely with Risk, Compliance, Security teams, and Payment Service Providers (PSPs) to implement necessary controls and participate in internal and external audits. Possess a deep understanding of complex payment flows, billing cycles, subscription management logic, processing logic, reconciliation processes, and potential fraud vectors. Stay abreast of technology advancements and ensure your team keeps updated on relevant skills and changes in the banking, payments, billing, and subscription industry landscape.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner closely and continuously with a variety of stakeholders including Software Engineers, Product Managers, Designers, Product Owners, Product Teams (including those in US and Europe regions), Operations, SRE, Infrastructure teams, Finance teams (for reconciliation, reporting), Sales, Support, Ecommerce, and other internal stakeholders. Be the trusted partner of business customers and engineering teams in solving both technical and business problems. Communicate technical concepts and strategy clearly and effectively to both technical and non-technical audiences, including executives. Ability to negotiate with and influence stakeholders, exhibiting the right posture to make sound decisions and drive forward strategic transformation initiatives.

Required Qualifications:

Based on the combined requirements, here’s what you'll need to bring to the table:

• Significant experience in software engineering, with a strong focus on backend systems, distributed systems, or high-availability secure platforms. We're looking for someone with 15+ years’ experience leading technical teams and complex project delivery using Agile methodologies, including product support. Additionally, 12+ years of technical leadership experience in application development (on-prem or cloud) for large companies and driving business adoption of platforms is essential.
• Must be a seasoned banking professional with deep experience in the banking domain.
• Preferable experience with core banking platforms like Fiserv or equivalent systems such as FIS or Finacle.
• Proven experience building and scaling complex payments, billing, or subscription systems, fintech platforms, or high-transaction volume financial applications.
• Demonstrated experience managing banking systems, payment systems, and a deep understanding of and practical experience with the compliance and regulatory framework relevant to these areas (like PCI DSS, AML, KYC, GDPR, data privacy). This includes experience with financial regulations, security testing, compliance/data privacy/access controls/monitoring requirements, and handling global audits.
• Proven experience leading and managing large engineering teams (e.g., 75+ employees and contractors/partners).
• 10+ years managing global supplier partners, focusing on cost-effective sourcing and delivery.
• Experience designing and implementing highly available, scalable, and reliable distributed systems.
• Proficiency in at least one major cloud platform (AWS, Azure, GCP experience is highly valued) and experience with cloud-native architectures.
• A Master’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Data Science, or a related technical field is strongly preferred. A Bachelor's degree in a related technical field or equivalent extensive practical experience is required.
• Very strong leadership, communication, and interpersonal skills, with a proven track record of building, motivating, and managing high-performing teams. This includes exhibiting the right negotiating posture and the ability to influence stakeholders.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Proven track record of managing large global budgets and leading organizational change management.
• Demonstrated ability to manage complex projects and aggressive timelines.
• A quick learner, self-starter, and energetic leader with a strong drive to deliver results.

Preferred Qualifications:

These are skills or experiences that would make you an even stronger candidate:

• Experience in technical program management and delivering transformational projects.
• Specific experience building high-performance engineering teams.
• Experience managing or working effectively with globally distributed teams and leveraging offshore development service providers.
• Prior experience working in a Fintech or large finance/banking company.
• Experience with specific payment types or networks (e.g., Card schemes like Visa/Mastercard, ACH, Wire transfers, Digital Wallets).
• Experience with microservices architecture and event-driven systems.
• Familiarity with fraud detection and risk management systems.
• Experience working in a highly regulated industry environment (reinforcing the required compliance knowledge).
• Experience with specific technologies relevant to our stack (e.g., Java, Python, Go, Kafka, Kubernetes, specific databases like PostgreSQL, Cassandra, MongoDB).