Manager, Engineering - Payments

Circle (NYSE: CRCL) is one of the world’s leading internet financial platform companies, building the foundation of a more open, global economy through digital assets, payment applications, and programmable blockchain infrastructure. Circle’s platform includes the world’s largest regulated stablecoin network anchored by USDC, Circle Payments Network for global money movement, and Arc, an enterprise-grade blockchain designed to become the Economic OS for the internet. Enterprises, financial institutions, and developers use Circle to power trusted, internet-scale financial innovation. Learn more at circle.com.

What you’ll be part of:

Circle is committed to visibility and stability in everything we do. As we grow as an organization, we're expanding into some of the world's strongest jurisdictions. Speed and efficiency are motivators for our success and our employees live by our company values: High Integrity, Future Forward, Multistakeholder, Mindful, and Driven by Excellence. We have built a flexible work environment where new ideas are encouraged and everyone is a stakeholder.

What you'll be responsible for

Circle's Payments engineering organization builds the infrastructure that moves value across the Circle Payments Network (CPN) and Managed Payments, connecting banks, payment service providers (PSPs), and fintechs to fast, low-cost, always-on cross-border settlement in USDC and EURC. As Engineering Manager, Payments, you'll lead a team responsible for backend systems that power financial institution onboarding, payment orchestration, and bulk payment processing. You'll be accountable for the delivery, reliability, security, and financial correctness of systems that move customer funds at scale, while developing a high-performing engineering team and partnering closely with stakeholders across Circle.

What you'll work on

• Lead the day-to-day execution of an engineering team, including planning, prioritization, delivery, and continuous improvement of team processes.

• Provide technical and architectural direction for payment orchestration, ledger and reconciliation systems, and bank or PSP integrations handling high transaction volumes.

• Partner with Product, Compliance, Risk, and Solutions Engineering to define roadmaps and deliver cross-border payouts, managed stablecoin settlement, and bulk payment capabilities.

• Own engineering delivery for key Payments initiatives, including regulated and managed payments expansion, while coordinating effectively across India- and US-based teams.

• Ensure the reliability, security, operational readiness, and financial correctness of payment-critical systems, including incident response and on-call practices.

• Recruit, coach, and develop engineers while owning performance management, career development, feedback, and promotion processes for direct reports.

• Drive engineering goals aligned to Payments business outcomes, including geographic expansion, transaction growth, customer experience, and reliable market launches across APAC and Africa.

What you'll bring to Circle

Core Requirements

• 7+ years of software engineering experience, including 2+ years of experience managing or formally leading software engineering teams.

• Experience designing, building, and operating distributed, highly available backend systems in production environments.

• Experience building or operating payments, banking, or financial transaction systems such as payment orchestration, ledgers, reconciliation, or settlement.

• Strong hands-on technical leadership skills, including architecture reviews, system design, technical trade-off discussions, and code-level guidance.

• Proficiency in one or more backend programming languages such as Java, Go, or Kotlin.

• Experience recruiting, coaching, developing, and performance-managing engineers, including senior-level individual contributors.

• Strong cross-functional collaboration skills and the ability to partner effectively with Product, Compliance, Risk, and external financial partners.

Preferred Requirements

• Experience with cross-border payments, correspondent banking, stablecoins, blockchain-based settlement rails, or integrations with banks and payment service providers.

• Familiarity with financial compliance concepts such as KYC/KYB, Travel Rule requirements, transaction monitoring, and regulated payments environments.

Additional role requirement

• This role requires regular working-hour overlap with US-based teams to support effective cross-time-zone collaboration across the Payments engineering organization.

Circle is on a mission to create an inclusive financial future, with transparency at our core. We consider a wide variety of elements when crafting our compensation ranges and total compensation packages.

Starting pay is determined by various factors, including but not limited to: relevant experience, skill set, qualifications, and other business and organizational needs. Please note that compensation ranges may differ for candidates in other locations.

We are an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status, or any other protected status required by the laws in the locations where we hire. Additionally, Circle participates in the E-Verify Program in certain locations, as required by law.

Should you require accommodations or assistance in our interview process because of a disability, please reach out to [email protected] for support. We respect your privacy and will connect with you separately from our interview process to accommodate your needs.