Head of Engineering (Payments)

Come Make an Impact on Millions of Brazilians!

At RecargaPay, we’re on a mission to deliver the best payment experience for Brazilian consumers and small businesses — by building a powerful digital ecosystem where the banked and unbanked connect, and where consumers and merchants have a one-stop shop for all their financial needs.

We serve over 10 million users and process more than USD 4 billion annually. We’ve been profitable since 2022 and operate our own credit business. We are an AI-first, 100% remote team, scaling in the rapidly changing Brazilian financial market.

Our goal? Deliver the best payment experience in Brazil for people and small businesses alike.

We value autonomy, ownership, and a bias for action. We’re looking for people who are curious, hands-on, and driven by impact — who want to solve real problems, work with strong teams, and rethink what’s possible.

If you’re ready to do your best work, at scale, with purpose — this is your place.

As Head of Engineering, you will serve as the senior-most technology leader within a tribe, responsible for defining and executing the technical strategy that supports the product vision and business goals. You’ll work as a peer to the Squad Leaders, who focus on product and business priorities, and report functionally to the Tribe Lead while maintaining a strong dotted-line relationship with the VP of Engineering.

This role blends deep technical expertise with organizational leadership and strategic influence. You will lead and develop a group of Engineering Managers and Technical Leads, ensure scalable and maintainable system design, promote a culture of technical excellence, and drive alignment across squads within your tribe. Your success will be measured not only by delivery outcomes but also by your ability to develop high-performing teams and align engineering execution with the broader objectives of the company.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and scale a team of engineers, promoting a culture of technical excellence, accountability, and continuous improvement.
• Remain actively involved in system architecture decisions and complex problem-solving
• Collaborate closely with Product, Design, and other stakeholders to ensure alignment between business goals and technology execution.
• Assist to define and drive engineering best practices across development, testing, deployment, and observability.
• Mentor engineers and technical leaders, fostering career growth and technical development.
• Participate in technical hiring and help shape the team structure and engineering processes.
• Promote the adoption of AI-assisted engineering practices within your squad and chapter, leveraging tools for code generation, automated refactoring, test case creation, and technical documentation. Identify opportunities where AI can enhance developer productivity, code quality, and team velocity.
• Guides conversations to remove blockers and encourage collaboration in your team.
• Define and drive the technical vision and strategy of the tribe, ensuring alignment with business objectives and long-term platform evolution.
• Partner with Squad Leaders and Product counterparts to shape roadmaps, identify trade-offs, and prioritize delivery.
• Mentor and develop Engineering Managers, Staff Engineers, and Tech Leads, fostering leadership maturity and technical growth across squads.
• Promote high standards in software architecture, observability, reliability, and scalability across systems and services.
• Ensure that teams are resourced, structured, and supported to deliver value with speed and quality.
• Actively contribute to talent strategy: hiring, succession planning, career development, and performance management of engineering leadership.
• Serve as the primary interface between engineering and the Tribe Lead, supporting delivery accountability and risk management.
• Collaborate with the VP of Engineering and other Heads of Engineering to uphold chapter-wide standards and contribute to global engineering strategy.
• Guide architectural decisions and governance, facilitating technical forums and peer reviews at tribe level.
• Champion the use of AI-assisted development tools and modern engineering practices to improve productivity, maintainability, and code quality.
• Establish and monitor key technical KPIs (reliability, velocity, tech debt, performance) across squads to drive continuous improvement.
• Lead by example in cultivating an inclusive, empowering engineering culture rooted in ownership, impact, and continuous learning.

Requirements

• Academic background in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related disciplines.
• Extensive experience in senior engineering leadership roles within product-centric technology companies.
• Strong expertise in Java and Spring Boot, complemented by solid knowledge of relational databases, data modeling, and the ability to extract and surface insights through reporting tools and dashboards.
• Solid experience designing and operating distributed systems and working with AWS cloud services.
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code, and microservices architecture.
• Understanding of software architecture, clean code principles, and system scalability in high-throughput or regulated environments (e.g., fintech, e-commerce).
• Strong grasp of modern software quality practices, including automated testing, code reviews, observability, and performance optimization.
• Familiarity with AI-assisted development tools (e.g., code generation, test automation, intelligent documentation).
• Proven ability to lead and scale high-performing engineering teams across multiple squads or domains.

• Experience managing Engineering Managers and building layered leadership structures.
• Demonstrated ability to define and track team OKRs and technical KPIs aligned with company goals.
• Skilled at evaluating and prioritizing technical initiatives based on business impact, platform health, and long-term strategy.
• Experience managing engineering budgets, tooling investments, and infrastructure resources efficiently.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to translate complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.

• Demonstrated success in partnering with cross-functional leaders from Product, Design, Business, and Operations.
• Proven ability to drive collaboration across squads and departments, aligning technical direction with strategic product goals.
• Comfortable operating in dynamic, fast-paced environments and leading through influence, vision, and technical credibility.
• Track record of hiring, mentoring, and developing engineering talent, including technical leads and managers.

• Committed to building inclusive, psychologically safe, and growth-oriented team environments.
• Experienced in driving knowledge sharing, promoting engineering best practices, and enabling continuous learning across teams.

Soft Skills

• Articulates complex technical and strategic priorities with clarity, adapting the message for audiences ranging from engineers to executive leadership.
• Inspires trust and alignment at scale, mobilizing cross-functional teams around a compelling vision and delivering through clarity, consistency, and credibility.
• Creates inclusive, psychologically safe environments, enabling individuals and teams to thrive, take ownership, and collaborate across boundaries.
• Operates fluidly across squads, chapters, tribes, and senior leadership, acting as a translator between business goals, product direction, and engineering execution.
• Develops leaders and high-impact teams, through mentorship, challenge, and a commitment to personal and professional growth at every level.
• Navigates complexity and change with composure, continuously reprioritizing and guiding teams through ambiguity without losing sight of long-term objectives.
• Exhibits enterprise-level ownership, ensuring engineering alignment, unblockage resolution, and accountability without micromanagement.
• Drives high-quality decisions using data, system health indicators, and risk trade-off analysis, even in ambiguous or high-stakes environments.
• Manages strategic tension constructively, facilitating resolution of misalignment through systems thinking and stakeholder consensus.
• Influences cross-tribe and chapter-wide technical direction, aligning engineering strategy with organizational goals and technology vision.
• Balances strategic foresight with operational rigor, ensuring that short-term execution is always in service of long-term resilience and growth.
• Leads by example in cultivating a culture of excellence, curiosity, and iterative improvement across multiple teams and technical domains.

Industry-Specific Knowledge

As Head of Engineering, you bring deep, hands-on familiarity with one or more core financial domains, such as lending, payments, credit cards, open finance, fraud prevention, merchant acquiring, or investment services, paired with a strategic understanding of the operational workflows, regulatory constraints, and economic drivers that define these industries.

You leverage this expertise to ensure that engineering execution is tightly aligned with product strategy and business priorities. Beyond shaping technical direction, you act as a key partner to Squad Leaders, Product Managers, and Tribe leadership, collaborating to define roadmaps, assess trade-offs, and guide decision-making that balances delivery velocity, platform health, and long-term business value.

Operating at scale, you oversee multiple engineering teams across the tribe, ensuring technical coherence, cross-squad alignment, and system-level resilience. You translate domain-specific needs into actionable technical direction and drive a culture in which engineering outcomes are measured not just by execution, but by their tangible impact on revenue growth, operational efficiency, regulatory readiness, and customer experience.

Benefits

• Competitive and market-aligned salary.
• Annual Award Program
• Remote work — wherever you are, you’re part of the team!
• Home office allowance through a monthly deposit in the RecargaPay app.
• Health and dental plans with no co-pay.
• Life insurance.
• Flexible meal allowance (via Flash).
• TotalPass membership to take care of your health.
• Language classes.

Diversity & Inclusion at RecargaPay

At RecargaPay, you’ll have the freedom to be who you are because we believe that diverse perspectives and experiences make us more creative and stronger. Here, everyone is welcome to express themselves authentically. We value the richness of each journey and the multiple ways of seeing the world, without distinctions of gender, race, sexual orientation, age, religion, or any other characteristic that makes us unique.

About the Use of Your Data

By sharing your resume with us, you authorize the use of your data for analysis during the selection process and possibly for other opportunities within the RecargaPay group. You can request the update or deletion of your information at any time, in accordance with LGPD (General Data Protection Law).