Engineering Lead II - Contacts & Recipients (Java team)

Requirements:

• Strong technical background: Expert in backend engineering (Java ecosystem preferred) with a track record of designing complex, distributed systems. You understand the difference between "working code" and "scalable architecture."
• Leadership experience: You have led high-performing teams (hiring, performance management, coaching). You know how to manage a large team by delegating effectively to senior engineers.
• Product mindset: You understand the "why" behind the "what." You can map technical efforts directly to business goals and customer value.
• Strategic thinking: You can switch between reviewing a Pull Request and planning the 12-month technical strategy for a critical business domain.
• Communication: Excellent communicator, capable of articulating technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.

Nice to haves:

• Experience in fintech, payments, or "Identity/Graph" data domains.
• Experience building high-throughput APIs for enterprise/platform clients.
• Previous experience scaling a domain from a single team into multiple squads.

What you'll be doing:

• Reimagining the contacts domain. We need to fundamentally rethink how we model people, businesses, and bank accounts. You and your team own the architecture for this: it’s a complex distributed systems challenge that touches everything: bank accounts, local payment networks, and the next generation of Wise features.
• Scaling for Wise Platform: This isn't just for the Wise app. Big banks and enterprises use our API, which means our search and validation engines need to be lightning-fast and bulletproof, even when our biggest partners turn on the tap.
• Defining the product roadmap: You’re not here to just churn through a backlog. You’ll work side-by-side with your Product Manager to figure out what we build next. You’ll be the one making the tough calls between shipping fast, staying secure, and building for the long term.
• Growing the team: You will start with a large, high-output team with the potential to scale it further.

Perks and benefits:

• Not specified in the provided job description.