Job Description

Principal Engineer – Java | Payments

Sydney | Permanent

Shape the Future of Payments Engineering

A leading financial services provider is investing in the next generation of its real-time payments platform and is looking for a Principal Engineer to help define what's next.

This is an opportunity to work at the forefront of modern software engineering, building highly scalable, cloud-native payment systems that process mission-critical financial transactions. You'll have the autonomy to shape technical strategy, influence architecture across multiple engineering teams and drive the adoption of emerging technologies—all while remaining hands-on and close to the code.

We're looking for an engineer who is passionate about solving complex technical challenges, enjoys driving innovation and is excited by how AI is transforming the software development lifecycle.

What You'll Be Doing

• Design and build highly scalable Java services powering modern payment platforms.

• Drive architecture across distributed, event-driven microservices handling high-volume, low-latency transaction processing.

• Develop resilient payment orchestration capabilities supporting multiple payment rails and transaction flows.

• Shape technical roadmaps and influence engineering strategy across multiple teams.

• Lead complex engineering initiatives from concept through to production.

• Remain hands-on, contributing code while mentoring engineers and raising engineering standards.

• Champion AI-assisted software development, leveraging modern tooling to improve developer productivity and software quality.

• Evaluate emerging technologies and identify opportunities to improve platform capability, scalability and customer outcomes.

• Ensure systems are secure, resilient and designed to meet the demands of large-scale financial services.

About You

You'll likely be operating as a Principal Engineer, Staff Engineer, Technical Architect or Senior Technical Lead with a passion for building large-scale distributed systems.

You'll bring:

• Expert Java and Spring Boot experience.

• Strong cloud engineering capability across AWS and/or GCP.

• Deep expertise in microservices, distributed systems, event-driven architecture and modern integration patterns.

• Experience building payment platforms, payment orchestration services or other high-throughput financial systems.

• A strong understanding of payment ecosystems, including card payments, issuer/acquirer integrations, Open Banking or real-time payment processing.

• Knowledge of secure software engineering practices for financial systems and mission-critical transaction processing.

• Proven experience driving architecture, influencing technical strategy and mentoring engineering teams while remaining hands-on.

• Practical experience embedding AI into the SDLC using modern engineering tools such as Claude Code, Roo Code, Gemini CLI, Cursor, GitHub Copilot or similar.

• Excellent communication skills with the ability to influence technical and non-technical stakeholders alike.

Why Join?

This is more than a Principal Engineer role—it's an opportunity to shape the future of engineering within one of Australia's leading financial services organisations.

You'll work alongside high-calibre engineers solving complex distributed systems challenges, influence the technical roadmap of a business-critical payments platform and help define how emerging technologies and AI are embedded into modern software development.

If you're looking for a role where you can combine architectural leadership, hands-on engineering and genuine innovation, we'd love to hear from you.