Director of Engineering, Payments

Overview

Lead the strategy, design, and operation of Upwork’s next generation payments systems, ensuring scalability, security, global compliance, and integration with evolving financial technologies such as cloud native systems and Web3. You will oversee a high impact engineering function that enables seamless value exchange between clients and freelancers.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Leadership and Strategy

• Define and drive architecture for core payment platforms including processing, reconciliation, payouts, and fraud detection

• Establish best practices in engineering quality, system reliability, observability, and continuous integration and delivery

Execution and Delivery

• Lead end to end development of complex payment features from early prototyping through to production with strong performance expectations

• Collaborate cross functionally with Product, Design, Risk, Legal, and Finance to deliver cohesive and compliant solutions

Compliance and Operations

• Ensure global payment systems meet all applicable regulatory requirements such as PCI DSS, PSD2, Know Your Customer, and Anti Money Laundering

• Oversee incident response, system resiliency planning, and continuous improvement processes

Innovation and Integration

• Drive adoption of emerging technologies including digital wallets, Web3 infrastructure, and embedded financial services

• Evaluate and integrate third party payment partners and platforms aligned with strategic business needs

Team Leadership and Culture

• Build, mentor, and scale a high performing engineering team

• Foster a collaborative, inclusive, and agile development culture that reflects Upwork’s values