Director of Engineering
Paymentology · Madrid, Spain
You apply off-site, with the employer or the job board. I never handle applications.
Unstoppable starts with people. The future of payments is being built today, and at Paymentology, we are looking for people who want to help shape it. We power card issuing for leading banks, fintechs and digital brands across the globe, and as we continue to grow, we are looking for curious, ambitious people who thrive on solving complex challenges, embrace innovation and want to make a tangible impact at global scale.
Director of Engineering – Digital Services
At Paymentology, we’re building the global payments platform of the future, enabling banks, fintechs and innovators to issue and process cards across more than 60 countries.
We’re looking for an experienced Director of Engineering to lead our Digital Services domain and play a key role in shaping the next stage of our engineering organisation.
This is a high-impact leadership role for someone who can look beyond day-to-day delivery, think ahead, and build the technical, organisational and leadership foundations needed to scale.
What you’ll do
- Set the engineering strategy and direction for your domain, translating business and product priorities into clear technical and organisational outcomes.
- Lead, coach and develop Engineering Managers and senior technical leaders, building leadership capability, succession and greater autonomy across teams.
- Strengthen delivery across a complex portfolio, creating the operating rhythms, accountability and visibility needed for teams to execute predictably.
- Shape the domain as we scale, including team structures, ownership, capability, leadership capacity and future hiring needs.
- Drive technical and operational excellence across architecture, reliability, security, observability, performance and maintainability.
- Partner closely with Product, Architecture, Operations and senior leadership, ensuring Engineering remains connected to customer needs and wider business objectives.
- Navigate ambiguity, competing priorities and cross-team dependencies, making thoughtful trade-offs between customer value, speed, quality, risk and long-term sustainability.
- Use meaningful engineering, operational and people metrics to identify risks, improve performance and drive continuous improvement.
Who you are
You’re a future-focused leader who naturally thinks 6–18 months ahead, anticipating what the organisation, technology and teams will need before today’s challenges become tomorrow’s blockers.
You set a high but practical bar for excellence, making engineering quality and continuous improvement part of everyday delivery.
You own outcomes and lead with accountability, remaining calm and decisive through incidents, escalations and difficult trade-offs and ensuring commitments translate into action.
You’re passionate about growing other leaders, coaching Engineering Managers and senior ICs while building succession and meaningful development opportunities.
You’re a clear, collaborative communicator who can create alignment across Engineering, Product, Platform, Architecture, Data and Operations, making complex risks and trade-offs understandable.
And importantly, you lead with humanity. You build trust and psychological safety alongside high performance, approach difficult conversations fairly and transparently, and never lose sight of the people behind the work.
What we’re looking for
- Proven experience operating at Engineering Director level, with responsibility for leading Engineering Managers and multiple software teams.
- A strong track record of scaling engineering organisations and developing managers into effective, autonomous leaders.
- The ability to think strategically while remaining close enough to delivery and technology to understand where intervention is needed.
- Strong technical foundations and broad judgement across architecture, system design, reliability, security and operational excellence.
- Experience translating business and product strategy into an engineering direction that teams can understand and execute.
- Evidence of improving delivery and engineering effectiveness through clear operating mechanisms, data and strong leadership rather than heroics.
- Strong organisational design and people leadership capability, including coaching, performance management, succession planning, hiring and capability development.
- The confidence and credibility to influence senior stakeholders and create clarity when navigating complex or ambiguous decisions.
- Experience within payments, fintech, regulated or high-availability environments would be highly advantageous.
- A leadership style grounded in curiosity, humility, transparency, decisive ownership and genuine care for people.
If you’re an established engineering leader who enjoys building strong organisations as much as building great technology, and you’re excited by the challenge of operating at global payments scale, we’d love to hear from you.
Come help us shape the future of engineering at Paymentology.
At Paymentology, we believe that making a difference starts with the people behind the work. You will be part of a diverse, global team of Paymentologists who are united by a shared mission to advance the world through payments.
This is an opportunity to contribute to meaningful work, collaborate across markets and functions, and help shape the future of a business with global reach and real impact.
We are an equal opportunity employer committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace where everyone can thrive. We welcome applications from people of all backgrounds and do not discriminate on any unlawful ground, including race, colour, ethnicity, sex, gender, pregnancy, marital status, family responsibility, age, disability, sexual orientation, religion, belief, language or HIV status.
Paymentology will never request any form of payment from applicants at any stage of our recruitment process, including for applications, interviews, training or job placements. If anyone asks you for money while claiming to act on behalf of Paymentology, please treat this as fraudulent and do not make any payment. All legitimate Paymentology vacancies are advertised via our official careers page, and our recruitment emails are sent only from official Paymentology domains.