Tech Lead - Credit Card Payment Engineering

ABOUT YOU

We are seeking a highly experienced Tech Lead – Credit Card Payment Engineering to architect, build, and scale our card payment processing platform. This leader will serve as the technical authority across the full card payments ecosystem, with deep expertise in the four-party (open-loop) and three-party (closed-loop) models, and hands-on experience across authorization, clearing, settlement, reconciliation, and compliance. This role goes beyond transaction processing — it requires ownership of financial integrity systems, including automated reconciliation frameworks, reporting pipelines, monitoring thresholds, and operational escalation paths to ensure payment accuracy, reliability, and audit readiness at scale.

ABOUT US

Xsolla is a global commerce company with robust tools and services to help developers solve the inherent challenges of the video game industry. From indie to AAA, companies partner with Xsolla to help them fund, distribute, market, and monetize their games. Grounded in the belief in the future of video games, Xsolla is resolute in the mission to bring opportunities together, and continually make new resources available to creators. Headquartered and incorporated in Los Angeles, California, Xsolla operates as the merchant of record and has helped over 1,500+ game developers to reach more players and grow their businesses around the world. With more paths to profits and ways to win, developers have all the things needed to enjoy the game.

For more information, visit xsolla.com.

Responsibilities: :
• Architect and lead the implementation of scalable, fault-tolerant card payment processing systems.

• Design systems aligned with: Four-party model (Visa/Mastercard), Three-party model (Amex/Discover)

• Own the full transaction lifecycle: Real-time authorization, Batch clearing, and Settlement and fund movements

• Implement resilient routing strategies, redundancy, and failover mechanisms.

• Lead integrations with: Acquiring banks, Card networks, Payment gateways, Fraud providers, Tokenization services

• Architect and maintain automated reconciliation frameworks that: Match authorization, clearing, and settlement records. Reconcile internal ledgers with acquirer and network reports. Detect mismatches, duplicates, and missing transactions

• Design systems to ensure ledger consistency and idempotency

• Build safeguards to prevent revenue leakage

• Implement transaction state tracking across the entire lifecycle

• Ensure systems are audit-ready and compliant with financial controls

• Design and maintain payment reporting systems including: Authorization rate reports, Settlement reconciliation reports, Fee and interchange breakdown reports, Chargeback and dispute metrics

• Build internal dashboards for: Financial performance, Cost optimization, and Risk monitoring

• Implement threshold-based alerting systems, including: Authorization rate drops, Abnormal decline patterns, Settlement mismatches, Volume anomalies, and Chargeback ratio spikes

• Define and implement escalation paths for: Acquirer outages, Network disruptions, Fraud spikes, and Reconciliation failures

• Partner with Finance and Risk to define monitoring thresholds and response playbooks.

• Ensure compliance with: PCI DSS, Card network operating regulations, Data encryption and tokenization standards

• Design secure card vaulting and tokenization solutions.

• Integrate fraud detection systems and risk scoring engines.

• Support 3D Secure and SCA frameworks.

• Collaborate on chargeback prevention and representation workflows.

• Lead and mentor a team of payment engineers.

• Establish best practices for: Reliability engineering, Transaction idempotency, Distributed systems design, Observability and monitoring, and Incident response

• Drive documentation standards for payment flows and financial controls.

• Partner cross-functionally with Product, Finance, Risk, and Compliance.

• Act as the internal SME for card payments and guide engineering decisions based on domain knowledge.

Qualifications & Skills::
• 8+ years of software engineering experience.

• 3+ years designing or operating card payment processing systems at scale.

• Proven hands-on experience with: Authorization, clearing, and settlement flows, Four-party and three-party models, Interchange and fee structures, and Chargeback lifecycle

• Experience building or maintaining: Automated reconciliation systems, Payment ledgers, Financial reporting pipelines, Alerting and threshold monitoring systems

• Strong understanding of PCI DSS and payment security standards.

• Experience designing high-availability, distributed systems.

• Demonstrated understanding of: Card network rules (Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Discover), Issuer and acquirer roles, BIN ranges, MCC codes, AVS, CVV, 3D Secure and Strong Customer Authentication, Authorization optimization strategies, Chargeback lifecycle and dispute workflows, Interchange fees, assessments, and acquirer markups, Cost optimization and routing logic based on fee economics

Nice to Have: :
• Experience at a PSP, acquirer, issuer, or fintech platform.

• Experience optimizing authorization rates and routing strategies.

• Familiarity with global payments and cross-border processing.

• Experience managing high transaction volumes (10M+ monthly transactions).

• Exposure to audit processes and financial compliance reviews.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.