Engineering Manager - Transaction Processing in Berlin

At PPRO, we simplify access to local payments - providing a local payments platform that empowers giants like PayPal, Stripe, and Microsoft to connect with billions of consumers worldwide. We are on an ambitious, fast-paced mission to 3x our growth by 2028 - and we're just getting started. Our magic lies in our team of proud payments nerds. Spanning over 50 nationalities across 10+ global locations, our diverse cultures aren't a checklist; they are the competitive advantage driving our innovation. This is a people-first, high trust environment where you'll have the autonomy to make a massive impact, own your work end-to-end, and grow through broad exposure, meaningful challenges, and continuous learning. We get things done, challenge respectfully, put the customer first, and recognise that our biggest successes are those we create as a team. If you're ready to leave your footprint on global commerce, join us.

The Purpose:

Engineering Managers at PPRO build collaborative teams that ship high-quality, scalable and resilient products. In Transaction Processing, we run the payment gateway and the APIs at the heart of PPRO. Every payment our merchants and partners send goes through the systems you'll own.

Think of yourself as the hands-on "mini-CTO" of the platform every other PPRO domain depends on. You'll set direction across the gateway and API layer, grow the people who lead it and make calls that shape how PPRO processes payments for years to come.

Responsibilities include:

• Partner with Product to turn ambiguous, multi-quarter goals into a technology strategy and roadmap for the gateway and API layer, with clear milestones and cross-team dependencies managed early
• Grow our APIs into the best way to integrate with PPRO, including taking over APIs from other domains and onboarding new partners and payment types (from local payment methods to stablecoins)
• Run several critical initiatives at once, own their risks and make quick reprioritisation calls when the business needs it
• Build an architecture culture across the platform: shared patterns, reusable libraries and clear domain boundaries, designed for availability, idempotency, scale, disaster recovery and Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance at the edge
• Stay hands-on: review designs and pull requests, pair with engineers and use AI tools well (and know when not to trust them)
• Lead, coach and grow engineers and Staff-level technical leaders. Hire as the API scope grows, raise the hiring bar and develop the next generation of technical and people leaders
• Own operational excellence for the whole platform: SLOs and error budgets, observability and testing standards, incident leadership (including communication with senior stakeholders and customers), business continuity planning and cloud spend within budget
• Work across domains like Billing, Reconciliation, Disputes, Merchant Boarding and Technical Operations, and mediate priorities between Engineering, Product and Partnerships. You'll influence where you don't have direct authority, using clear, data-backed reasoning
• Represent the platform to senior leadership and help shape priorities beyond your own team
• Create a team where people feel safe to challenge, give candid feedback to peers and managers, and learn from what doesn't work

What would make you a great fit:

• Experience leading engineering teams with broad platform scope, ideally working with Staff Engineers or tech leads (managing more than one team is a strong plus)
• A track record of delivering complex, multi-quarter technical programmes with high uncertainty and many cross-team dependencies
• Deep experience designing and running high-availability distributed systems or public APIs at scale, using Java and Spring Boot
• Strong experience with AWS, Docker, Kubernetes and Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform)
• A strong operational mindset: SLOs, observability, incident management, testing strategy and cost awareness
• Experience hiring, developing and growing high-performing, diverse teams, with evidence you've helped people step up a level
• The ability to explain technical trade-offs to engineers, product partners and senior leaders alike, in writing and in the room
• A humble, inclusive leadership style, plus a pragmatic, results-oriented approach and a drive to keep improving
• A desire to spend around 40% of your time close to the code and architecture
• Hands-on experience using generative AI in engineering work, and a view on where it helps and where it doesn't
• Payments or fintech experience (nice to have): payment gateways, Payment Service Provider (PSP) or acquirer integrations, PCI DSS, idempotency or reconciliation
• Event-driven architectures (nice to have)
• Working proficiency in English

Tech stack:

• Java and Spring Boot
• Cloud-native microservices on AWS (EKS, DynamoDB, Kinesis, ElastiCache, CloudFront, WAF)
• Docker and Kubernetes
• Event-driven architectures
• Infrastructure-as-Code with Terraform
• Datadog for observability

What's in it for you?

• Hybrid working - We offer a hybrid structure with a 3 days / week on site expectation, so you can strike the balance between office and home working. In addition to our 30-day holiday allowance, we also provide a work from abroad policy, enabling employees to work remotely for up to another 30 days per year.
• Learning and Development - We offer a €1,000 annual budget to support your professional growth—because investing in your development benefits us all. In addition, we provide leadership cafés, on-the-job training, and other opportunities to help you grow your skills and thrive in your role.
• Insurance - Because better safe than sorry - we want our employees to benefit from various insurances including accident insurance, disability insurance, direct insurance (bAV) and travel insurance.
• Gym membership - PPRO helps contribute towards the costs of your gym membership, supporting your physical fitness journey while easing the burden on your wallet.
• Enhance Family Leave - We understand the importance of family - that's why we offer enhanced family leave to support you during key life moments.
• Mental Health Platform - We’ve teamed up with a top well‑being platform to provide one‑on‑one therapy, chat therapy, therapist‑led courses, guided meditations, and more.
• Pet-friendly office - Because work is better with your paw‑tners by your side.

Our Principles:

We get things done: We are courageous; we take ownership, make decisions and get things done.

We act with trust and integrity: We listen first and challenge respectfully. We seek out and leverage diverse perspectives. We welcome and offer honest and open feedback, always assuming positive intent

We put the customer first: We are laser focused on delivering outstanding outcomes for our customers. We put the customer at the heart of what we do.

We make things better: We boldly explore new ideas and have an unwavering commitment to continuous improvement.

We work as a team: We collaborate closely and value team success over individual achievement.

Our commitment to Diversity and Inclusion:

Payments only work when they reflect how different people actually pay, and we build teams the same way: our people span more than 50 nationalities, and that mix is exactly what makes us good at this. So if you're reading this and wondering whether you tick every box, apply anyway. We're far more interested in what you'll bring than a perfect match on paper.

We welcome applicants of every background, identity, and experience, and we make sure our hiring process is accessible to everyone. If you need an adjustment at any stage, just let us know: we're happy to help.

A few more things:

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring

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