Senior Backend Engineer - NorthAm Risk

Wise is a global technology company dedicated to revolutionizing the way the world moves and manages money. The Senior Backend Engineer for the North America Risk team will play a pivotal role in safeguarding customers and the business by proactively addressing financial crime within the North American market. This team is integral to Wise's mission, focusing on real-time risk assessments and fraud prevention to ensure secure and seamless transactions.

In this role, the engineer will be responsible for designing and implementing robust backend systems that perform real-time risk assessments for every transaction. This includes developing and optimizing machine learning models, managing real-time event processing using technologies like Kafka and Apache Flink, and ensuring the scalability and resilience of distributed systems. Collaboration with cross-functional teams, including data scientists and analysts, is essential to refine risk models and rules, as well as to support chargeback and fraud investigation efforts.

Candidates should have over seven years of experience with Java, Kotlin, or other JVM-based languages, with a deep understanding of the Spring framework. A strong focus on latency optimization is crucial, as the role demands maintaining sub-second end-to-end latency for real-time risk checks. Proficiency in database internals, query optimization, and experience with Kafka, Kafka Streams, or Apache Flink for real-time event processing are required. Experience with CI/CD pipelines and designing scalable, resilient distributed systems is also necessary. A customer-centric approach, with the ability to communicate complex technical concepts to non-technical audiences, is essential.

While not mandatory, familiarity with machine learning concepts, such as data pipelines, feature engineering, and precision/recall metrics, is advantageous. Experience with OLAP databases or data lakes, like Apache Iceberg, with Kafka ingestion, is also beneficial. Success in this role will be measured by the impact on reducing financial crime, scaling systems to handle new risk types, operational excellence in monitoring systems, and effective collaboration with global teams.

Wise offers a dynamic and inclusive work environment that fosters innovation and personal growth. Employees are encouraged to take ownership of their projects and contribute to the company's mission of making international money transfers faster, cheaper, and more transparent. The company supports continuous learning and provides opportunities for career advancement within the organization.