Software Engineering Director Jobs in California

Airwallex is the only unified payments and financial platform for global businesses. Powered by our unique combination of proprietary infrastructure and software, we empower over 250,000 businesses worldwide – including Brex, Rippling, Navan, Qantas, SHEIN and many more – with fully integrated solutions to manage everything from business accounts, payments, spend management and treasury, to embedded finance at a global scale.

Proudly founded in Melbourne, we have a team of over 2,300 of the brightest and most innovative people in tech across 27 offices around the globe. Valued at US$11 billion and backed by world-leading investors including T. Rowe Price, Visa, Mastercard, Robinhood Ventures, Sequoia, Salesforce Ventures, DST Global, and Lone Pine Capital, Airwallex is leading the charge in building the global payments and financial platform of the future. If you’re ready to do the most ambitious work of your career, join us.

We hire successful builders with founder-like energy who want real impact, accelerated learning, and true ownership. You bring strong role-related expertise and sharp thinking, and you’re motivated by our mission and operating principles. You move fast with good judgment, dig deep with curiosity, and make decisions from first principles, balancing speed and rigor.

You’re humble and collaborative; turn zero‑to‑one ideas into real products, and you “get stuff done” end-to-end. You use AI to work smarter and solve problems faster. Here, you’ll tackle complex, high‑visibility problems with exceptional teammates and grow your career as we build the future of global banking. If that sounds like you, let’s build what’s next.

About the team

The Engineering team at Airwallex is a diverse group of innovators, builders, and problem solvers, driven by a mission to empower businesses to operate anywhere, anytime. We thrive in a collaborative and fast-paced environment, where we're constantly pushing the boundaries of what's possible in the financial technology space. As a team, we value technical craftsmanship, continuous learning, and a strong sense of ownership, working together to build scalable, reliable, and secure products that empower businesses of all sizes to grow without borders.

You’ll lead the engineering organization for Airwallex's Spend domain in the US, owning the technical strategy and architectural roadmap for products spanning corporate cards, expense management, and spend workflows. This is a domain-level leadership role where you will be accountable for delivery quality, engineering excellence, and team growth across multiple squads. You will partner closely with Product, Design, and Commercial stakeholders to translate business strategy into technical execution, while building and scaling a high-performing engineering team in San Francisco. Your leadership skills, product thinking, and business acumen are what will set you apart, even as you maintain deep technical fluency to guide architectural decisions through your team rather than hands-on.

One of the most exciting aspects of this role is the opportunity to shape the future of agentic finance, removing human tasks from financial workflows and replacing them with intelligent agents across expense submission, approval, and reconciliation.

This role is based in San Francisco, US.

• Lead the Expenses sub-domain (product / family of products), owning the vision, delivery, and roadmap in close collaboration with the local product teams.
• Work alongside other Engineering Managers to evolve the technical architecture across the entire Spend domain, contributing to engineering leadership decisions that mature the technical platform for the future, particularly in areas of data engineering, AI, and analytics.
• Scale the US engineering team and whilst providing technical mentorship as new squads are established.
• Drive operational excellence across your domain by setting challenging OKRs, optimizing delivery processes, and ensuring high-quality results across multiple concurrent projects.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with Product, Design, Commercial, and other US Engineering Leads to align technical execution with business strategy and help build Airwallex's US site culture and employer brand.
• Own the talent acquisition strategy for your domain, working closely with Talent Acquisition to source, attract, and retain top engineering talent in the San Francisco market.

• 10+ years of experience in software engineering, with 5+ years in engineering leadership roles (Engineering Manager, Director, or equivalent).
• Demonstrated experience in people management, including managing managers or Engineering Leads, with a track record of building and scaling high-performing teams.
• Strong product thinking and the ability to partner closely with Product Management to define roadmaps, prioritize delivery, and drive business outcomes.
• Deep technical fluency in software architecture and system design, with experience guiding architectural decisions for large-scale, complex distributed systems.
• Proven ability to operate in fast-paced, high-growth environments where incremental improvement, ownership, and speed of execution are valued.

• Experience in fintech, financial services, payments, or a similarly regulated industry where correctness and data integrity are critical.
• Familiarity with AI/ML-driven product development or experience evolving technical platforms to incorporate data engineering, analytics, or agentic automation capabilities.
• Comfort operating across global time zones and collaborating with distributed engineering teams in multiple regions.
• Entrepreneurial mindset with a bias toward action and continuous improvement, and curiosity to learn quickly, adapt fast, and grow through stretch opportunities.

Airwallex does not accept unsolicited resumes from search firms/recruiters. Airwallex will not pay any fees to search firms/recruiters if a candidate is submitted by a search firm/recruiter unless an agreement has been entered into with respect to specific open position(s). Search firms/recruiters submitting resumes to Airwallex on an unsolicited basis shall be deemed to accept this condition, regardless of any other provision to the contrary.

Airwallex is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We value diversity and anyone seeking employment at Airwallex is considered based on merit, qualifications, competence and talent. We don’t regard color, religion, race, national origin, sexual orientation, ancestry, citizenship, sex, marital or family status, disability, gender, or any other legally protected status when making our hiring decisions. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.