Vice President, Payments Engineering

Job Profile: 2007, Development Engineering Executive 

Business Title: VP, Payments Engineering

Reports to: SVP, Global Product Engineering - Prashant Desale

Management Category: Vice President Exec 

Overview

Payments are at the heart of commerce, and the industry is undergoing one of its most significant transformations in decades. Real-time payments, embedded finance, intelligent automation, AI-native software development, cloud platforms, and evolving customer expectations are fundamentally changing how businesses move money.

This is not a traditional engineering leadership role.

This is an opportunity to lead one of the most strategic technology transformations at WEX. As Vice President of Payments Engineering, you will lead a world-class global engineering organization responsible for delivering secure, scalable, cloud-native payment platforms while helping redefine how software is built in the era of AI.

You will partner closely with Product, Architecture, Commercial leaders, and the Payments Technology Leader to transform complex business challenges into exceptional customer experiences and industry-leading payment capabilities.

If you are passionate about payments, modern engineering, AI-native software development, and building high-performing engineering organizations, we'd love to talk with you.

About the Role

The Vice President of Payments Engineering is responsible for leading the engineering organization that delivers WEX's Payments platform.

You will lead multiple global engineering teams responsible for designing, building, and operating mission-critical payment systems that process billions of dollars in transactions while maintaining the highest standards of availability, security, scalability, and customer trust.

Success in this role requires equal strength in technology leadership, engineering execution, organizational leadership, and business partnership.

You will be responsible for transforming engineering practices through AI-native software development while delivering predictable business outcomes and accelerating WEX's  modernization journey.

What You'll Do
Lead World-Class Engineering Organizations

• Lead multiple global software engineering teams responsible for Payments platforms and services.

• Build an engineering culture focused on innovation, accountability, operational excellence, and continuous learning.

• Attract, develop, and retain exceptional engineering talent.

• Coach engineering leaders and build a strong leadership pipeline.

Deliver Critical Business Outcomes

• Own engineering delivery for Payments initiatives.

• Translate technology strategy into executable roadmaps.

• Deliver predictable, high-quality software that meets customer and business commitments.

• Drive engineering execution across multiple product domains and shared platform capabilities.

• Partner with Product and Technology leadership to balance customer value, delivery speed, and technical sustainability.

Drive AI-Native Software Engineering

This is one of the most important aspects of the role.

We believe AI will fundamentally reshape software engineering.

You will lead the adoption of AI-native engineering practices across the software development lifecycle, including:

• AI-assisted software design

• AI-powered coding

• Intelligent testing automation

• AI-driven code reviews

• Automated documentation

• AI-enabled operational excellence

• Developer productivity platforms

• Agentic software engineering

You'll help define how engineering teams build software in the next decade.

Build Modern Payments Platforms

Lead engineering for highly available payment platforms supporting:

• Virtual Payments

• Accounts Payable

• Payment orchestration

• Payment processing

• Embedded Payments

• Treasury and settlement

• Commercial card platforms

• API-first payment capabilities

Develop highly scalable cloud-native systems capable of supporting enterprise customers around the world.

Partner Across the Business

This role requires exceptional collaboration.

You will partner closely with:

• Product Leadership

• Payments Technology Leadership

• Commercial teams

• Enterprise Architecture

• Security

• Operations

• Customer Success

• Finance

• External partners

You should be equally comfortable discussing architecture with engineers, delivery commitments with Product, and customer outcomes with executives.

Modernize Through 

Help drive WEX's  transformation by:

• Building reusable payment capabilities

• Accelerating platform convergence

• Improving engineering productivity

• Reducing technical debt

• Standardizing engineering practices

• Driving cloud modernization

• Enabling intelligent automation

What We're Looking For

We're looking for a technology leader who combines deep engineering expertise with strong payments and business acumen.

The ideal candidate has successfully led large engineering organizations while modernizing complex payment platforms and delivering transformational business outcomes.

You are comfortable operating at both the executive and technical levels, able to discuss platform architecture with distinguished engineers one moment and business strategy with executive leadership the next.

Qualifications
Required

• 20+ years of software engineering experience with at least 12 years leading large engineering organizations.

• Significant experience building modern payment systems, financial platforms, or other highly regulated transaction-processing platforms.

• Deep understanding of payments, including authorization, settlement, reconciliation, treasury, commercial payments, payment networks, APIs, and payment operations.

• Proven experience delivering cloud-native distributed systems at enterprise scale.

• Strong technical background across modern architectures, microservices, APIs, event-driven systems, Kubernetes, public cloud, observability, resilience, and security.

• Demonstrated success leading organizational transformation.

• Strong software delivery track record with predictable execution across multiple teams.

• Experience leading globally distributed engineering organizations.

• Excellent executive communication and stakeholder management skills.

Preferred

• Experience at a leading payments or fintech company.

• Experience building AI-native engineering organizations.

• Experience implementing AI-assisted software development tools.

• Experience modernizing legacy platforms.

• Experience with platform engineering and developer productivity.

• Experience leading large-scale cloud migrations.

• MBA or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.

Leadership Characteristics

The successful candidate will be:

A Builder: Creates exceptional engineering organizations that consistently deliver customer value.
A Technologist: Brings deep technical credibility and earns the respect of senior engineers.
A Payments Expert: Understands how modern payment ecosystems operate and anticipates industry evolution.
AI-Native: Sees AI not as a feature, but as the future operating model for software engineering.
A Business Partner: Builds trusted relationships across Product, Commercial, and Technology while keeping customer outcomes at the center of every decision.
A Transformation Leader: Thrives in ambiguity, embraces change, and inspires teams through large-scale modernization.
A Talent Multiplier: Develops future leaders and creates an environment where engineers can do the best work of their careers.

The base pay range represents the anticipated low and high end of the pay range for this position. Actual pay rates will vary and will be based on various factors, such as your qualifications, skills, competencies, and proficiency for the role. Base pay is one component of WEX's total compensation package. Most sales positions are eligible for commission under the terms of an applicable plan. Non-sales roles are typically eligible for a quarterly or annual bonus based on their role and applicable plan. WEX's comprehensive and market competitive benefits are designed to support your personal and professional well-being. Benefits include health, dental and vision insurances, retirement savings plan, paid time off, health savings account, flexible spending accounts, life insurance, disability insurance, tuition reimbursement, and more. For more information, check out the "About Us" section.

Pay Range: $283,000.00 - $332,400.00