Director, Engineering, Financial Infrastructure at Checkout.com

Company Description

We’re Checkout.com - you might not know our name, but we’re behind many of the digital experiences people use every day.

When you book a holiday, order food, renew a subscription or check out online with brands like Spotify, Klarna, Uber Eats, Tik Tok, Sony, or e Bay, there’s a good chance our technology powers the payment behind the scenes.

At Checkout.com, we’re building where the world checks out - enabling over ten billion transactions every year for more than one billion shoppers globally. Our platform helps the world’s most ambitious businesses deliver seamless digital experiences at scale.

We’re also building a company designed for people who want to do career-defining work. We move fast, think globally, and believe great teams are built by hiring exceptional people with conviction, curiosity, and a focus on impact.

With 20 offices across six continents and London as our HQ, we’re shaping the future of fintech and we’re just getting started.

Role overview | Context

As our global footprint and product portfolio continue to grow, Checkout.com is now looking to hire a new Engineering leader for our Financial Infrastructure (FI) product pillar, based in Tallinn.

We see significant value in investing in the local team, and in the importance of scaling FI in line with our business growth and strategic objectives. The FI pillar supports numerous teams and cross-functional initiatives, and is the driving force behind Checkout striving to operate at public company standards. Their main customers are our Finance, Accounting and Treasury teams, but they also ‘connect the dots’ to other Product and Engineering pillars. This pillar is fundamental to underpinning our scale and complexity; by providing accurate, low-latency tools and systems that ensure the value and quality we deliver to our merchants is backed up by sound financial practice and operational excellence internally.

Whilst the Financial Infrastructure pillar already handles vast scale and complexity today, the demands on this team will ultimately continue to evolve as we pursue additional products and services outside of our core acquiring portfolio, such as the Checkout Business Account, multi-currency accounts, and powering broader Financial Experiences.

Role overview | Financial Infrastructure

The Financial Infrastructure pillar currently includes the following teams:

• Transactional Ledger: Building and maintaining a unified, real-time financial record designed to enable exceptional financial reporting and control. This acts as the single source of truth for all merchant transactions, encompassing processing, money movement, and fees, ensuring precision and reconciliation

• Data Pipeline: Providing robust data pipeline tools that automate the processing and distribution of critical financial data, including real-time cash identification and allocation. These tools ensure the efficient and standardized processing of various payment streams (including APMs) for comprehensive financial reconciliation across multiple products in our portfolio

• Financial Data Analytics: Mainly supporting our Treasury and Accounting teams

• Safeguarding: Providing support and enablement for merchant safeguarding

Role overview | Remit and Responsibilities

The incoming Engineering leader will be comfortable scaling critical, high-volume platforms and systems (potentially supporting financial transactions or money movement but may also apply to broader high-complexity software solutions at scale) and will have a proven track record of maintaining and evolving robust, highly available infrastructure at the highest standards, supporting multiple stakeholders.

This role will champion technical excellence and innovation; harnessing our #AthleteMindset by recognising that there is no finish line in the continuous delivery of unified, real-time tech platforms and infrastructure. They will also display a strong challenger mentality and ethos, ensuring our engineering strategy for the Financial Infrastructure pillar remains fit-for-purpose and ready to meet the challenges that rapid growth and expansion will continue to bring. This is also an opportunity to further establish Checkout.com as a best-in-class operator and thought leader within the Payments and digital ecosystems, and to increase our footprint within the Estonian tech community.

This person will act as an ambassador for our broader team on the ground in Tallinn - a key Engineering hub for Checkout since our acquisition of Icefire in 2021 - as a highly visible leader in the office, supporting local employees (mainly across Tech, Product and Finance), and serving as a talent magnet to grow the Engineering function whilst ensuring we maintain the highest bar on quality and provide material opportunities for progression. Within the Financial Infrastructure pillar, the incoming Director, Engineering will directly lead an established team of 30+ Engineers and EMs of varying seniorities.

Amongst other duties, the incoming Engineering leader will have impact across:

• Leading design and delivery of our Financial Infrastructure tooling and systems

• Supporting cross-functional teams of technical and non-technical stakeholders to solve complex Engineering problems whilst supporting business delivery

• Unlocking growth as Checkout’s aims continue to scale; paving the way for future strategic initiatives and business deliverables e.g. banking products

• Shaping robust, high-touch, low-latency software and infrastructure

• Championing creativity and innovation, and displaying a strong challenger mentality and ethos

• Managing and developing a high-performing, team of IC (individual contributor) Engineers and Engineering Managers; providing guidance, support and career development

• Striving for best practice on hiring, coaching, enablement and being a magnet for top talent in Tallinn, and an ambassador for our growing footprint there

Role overview | Desired Background, Core Competencies

The ideal candidate for the role will bring:

• Proven experience building, scaling, and operating mission-critical, high-volume, low latency infrastructure and platforms for internal stakeholders (e.g., ledgers, data tooling, reconciliation systems)

• This person will ideally bring specific knowledge related to complex Financial processes and transactions, but may come from broader tech environments

• Deep technical understanding of complex, cloud-native technology stacks and engineering systems is required, ideally with an understanding of Financial control, and related regulatory challenges and end-user requirements

• Track record of leading and developing multi-level engineering teams and offering mentoring, coaching and progression to encourage talent to thrive

• Experience acting as a site leader, external ambassador, and talent magnet will be beneficial, especially in driving technical culture and raising the bar on hiring

• Exceptional collaboration skills, with a proven ability to partner effectively with senior cross-functional stakeholders (locally and remote), particularly in Finance,Tech and Product teams is highly desirable

• A champion of technical excellence, continuous delivery, and robust, highly-available infrastructure, maximising productivity and ROI for your teams

• Humility, low-ego and an ideal ambassador for our mission, values and operating principles

Additional Information Bring all of you to work

We create the conditions for high performers to thrive, through real ownership, fewer blockers, and work that makes a difference from day one.

Here, you’ll move fast, take on meaningful challenges, and be recognized for the impact you deliver. It’s a place where ambition gets met with opportunity, and where your growth is in your hands.

We work as one team, and we back each other to succeed. So whatever your background or identity, if you’re ready to grow and make a difference, you’ll be right at home here.

It’s important we set you up for success and make our process as accessible as possible. So let us know in your application, or tell your recruiter directly, if you need anything to make your experience or working environment more comfortable.

Life atCheckout.com

We understand that work is just one part of your life. Our hybrid working model offers flexibility, with three days per week in the office to support collaboration and connection.

Curious about what it’s like to be part of our team? Visit our Careers Page to learn more about our culture, open roles, and what drives us.

For a closer look at daily life at Checkout.com, follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram