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Athena San Jose

@athenasanjose

Engineering Manager specializing in fintech payments and distributed systems, leading high-availability platforms with architecture-first delivery.

Philippines

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What I'm looking for

I want to lead architecture-first teams building secure, high-availability fintech and distributed systems—partnering with executives on compliance and roadmaps, strengthening observability and incident response, and embedding practical AI workflows without budget bloat.

I’m an Engineering Manager with 8 years in fintech payments, leading a 28-person engineering org at eTap, including 12 direct reports (3 engineering managers) across development, QA, DevOps, and Data/AI. I originate architecture for high-availability distributed systems handling financial transactions at scale, owning delivery end-to-end with final design authority.

At eTap, I serve a platform for 10,000+ self-service kiosks and 700+ billers, and I proactively solve problems at the system design level before they reach development. I act as the primary technical translator between CITO/executive stakeholders and cross-functional teams, converting compliance requirements and finance business concepts into architecture blueprints and delivery roadmaps.

I drive quality control and financial compliance through an ISO 27001:2019 transition across the full SDLC—embedding secure coding standards, quality checkpoints, and CI/CD compliance gates. I also independently developed an RCA process and incident management framework to improve the reliability and accuracy of financial transaction systems.

Some of my standout work includes designing an event-driven, queue-based “mysukli” Crediting Engine that reduced database calls by 85% and eliminated connection exhaustion errors, and originating “ClearCharge” for fee attribution and compliance across 700+ billers. I’m also building “ePuhunan” zero-to-one as full distributed system architecture for a microdeposit finance product, and I’ve rolled out observability tooling (CloudWatch standard after cost-benefit analysis) while founding a company-wide AI Guild to integrate practical AI workflows without incremental budget.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Current

Senior Manager, Software Dev

Current

Electronic Transfer & Advance Processing (eTap)

Jan 2020 - Present (6 years 5 months)

Led a 28-person engineering org (12 direct reports incl. 3 engineering managers) across development, QA, DevOps, and Data/AI powering 10,000+ kiosks and 700+ billers. Originated and owned high-availability distributed systems for financial transactions, reducing database calls by 85%, eliminating connection exhaustion errors, and driving an ISO 27001:2019 transition across the SDLC.

Distributed Systems Architecture Event Driven Architecture FinTech: Payments

Current

Senior Manager, Software Development

Current

Electronic Transfer & Advance Processing, Inc.

Jan 2020 - Present (6 years 5 months)

Led a 28-person engineering org (12 direct reports incl. 3 engineering managers) supporting 10,000+ kiosks and 700+ billers in fintech payments; originated and owned high-availability distributed system architectures with final design authority. Drove ISO 27001:2019 SDLC transition and incident/RCA processes, and delivered event-driven redesigns that reduced database calls by 85% and eliminated co

Distributed Systems Architecture FinTech: Payments Event Driven Architecture Datadog

Senior Software Engineer

Electronic Transfer & Advance Processing, Inc.

Jan 2018 - Jan 2020 (2 years)

Built the core MySukli digital account and internal payment APIs supporting a nationwide kiosk network. Collaborated with QA and optimized APIs to reduce transaction latency by 30%, and contributed to early distributed system architecture for centralized kiosk monitoring.

Payments Systems Distributed Systems Architecture Performance Optimization

Senior Software Engineer

Electronic Transfer & Advance Processing (eTap)

Jan 2018 - Jan 2020 (2 years)

Scaled a nationwide kiosk payments platform after joining as one of two developers, building core MySukli account functionality and internal payment APIs. Reduced transaction latency by 30% through API optimization and QA collaboration, and contributed to early distributed system architecture for centralized kiosk monitoring.

Distributed Systems Scalability