Payment Operations Engineer

Customer-Facing · Remote, Europe, Africa or Asia

About Caliza

Caliza is commercial banking infrastructure for companies that operate across borders. Most global businesses still piece together several banks, FX providers and spreadsheets to move money. Caliza replaces that with one platform and API: hold USD accounts, collect and pay in 33+ currencies, and convert between fiat and stablecoins, over local rails, SWIFT or stablecoins, in minutes instead of days. On top of that, we’re building the treasury layer: programmable accounts, approval policies, automated reconciliation and working capital, run by a customer’s finance team or their AI agents.

Our customers are importers, exporters, FX brokers, payment companies and fintechs across the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia. We’re licensed and regulated across our core markets, and our team has built financial infrastructure at Visa, Nubank, EBANX, Flutterwave, Upstart, Intuit and Silicon Valley Bank.

Our backers

Initialized Capital, Better Tomorrow Ventures, Abstract Ventures, New Form Capital, QED Investors, Valor Capital and Quona Capital, along with the founders of Flutterwave, Chipper Cash, Rappi, Pomelo, Dock, Remesa Online and Anchorage.

About the role

Caliza moves money across fiat payment rails in the Americas, Europe and Asia, including Fedwire, ACH, SPEI, SEPA and CNAPS, as well as blockchains. Most payments flow through automatically. When one doesn't, our customers need someone who can work out exactly what happened, explain it clearly, and get it resolved.

That's this role. When a customer asks "where's my payment?", you'll own the answer. You'll follow the payment from their API call, through our internal systems and ledger, out to our partner banks, the payment rail or the blockchain, and back. Then you'll explain what you found to the customer, push the bank for answers when needed, and hand our engineers a precise problem when something is genuinely broken.

You don't need to be an expert in every system a payment touches, but you need to be able to follow one through all of them. You're comfortable reading logs, querying a database and decoding a bank message, and equally comfortable explaining what you found to a customer, a bank or an engineer. You'll build a deep understanding of how our rails really behave over time; we'll teach you the Caliza-specific parts.

Location: Europe, Africa, or Asia. You'll be based there so customers get help during their working hours, but the role covers every rail we operate, not just the ones in your region. Professional English required.

In your first six months, you'll

Learn how payments flow through Caliza end to end, across fiat rails and stablecoins.
Within three months, understand all of our rails well enough to handle most customer payment issues on your own, whichever rail they're on.
Own customer payment investigations during your hours, across every rail, keeping customers informed from first message to resolution.
Write runbooks for the issues you see most, so the rest of the team can rely on them.
Build at least one tool or automation that measurably reduces manual work.

What you'll be doing

Be the technical point of contact for customers with payment problems, especially when the answer isn't obvious.
Answer technical API questions from live customers, such as failed webhooks, error codes or unexpected payment statuses. Helping new customers integrate before launch is handled separately by engineering.
Trace payments across our API, internal systems, ledger, partner banks, rails and blockchain to find where things stand and what happens next.
Tell expected behavior from a real bug, and escalate to engineering with clear evidence when it's a bug.
Work with partner banks and providers on investigations, returns and recalls.
Support compliance with information requests about specific payments.
Tag the root cause of each issue so we can fix the most common ones for good.
Review new rails and corridors before launch, bringing an operational view of how they'll fail.
Write SQL queries and scripts to automate repetitive work.

What we're looking for

3+ years in a technical, customer-facing role at a fintech, payments company, bank or API-first business, such as technical support, payment operations or implementation.
A solid understanding of how payments work: statuses, settlement, cutoffs, finality, returns and recalls. Experience with any major rail is fine; we'll teach you ours.
Comfort reading JSON API requests, logs and webhooks.
Working SQL, and some scripting in Python or similar.
Hands-on experience using AI tools in your daily work, for scripting, investigation or documentation, with the judgment to check what they produce.
A methodical approach to investigations: you form hypotheses and check them, rather than guessing.
Clear, calm communication with customers, especially when the full answer isn't known yet.
Comfort with high autonomy and ambiguity in a fast-moving, remote startup.

Nice to have

Hands-on experience with any of our rails: Fedwire, ACH, SPEI, SEPA (SCT and SCT Inst) or CNAPS. Experience across more than one region is a strong plus.
Familiarity with ISO 20022 payment messages (e.g. pacs.002, pacs.004, camt.053, camt.056).
Experience with stablecoins, crypto wallets or block explorers.
Experience working with partner or sponsor banks on investigations.
Familiarity with double-entry accounting and reconciliation.

How we work

We use AI tools every day and expect you to as well, for scripting, investigation and documentation alike. You own what you produce with them: you check it, understand it, and stand behind it. Because we handle customer and payment data, we follow clear rules about which data can go into which tools.

Benefits

Benefits vary by country of employment and may include health coverage, paid time off and holidays, a home office or equipment allowance, a professional development budget, and in-person team offsites. Candidates based outside the US may be employed through an employer of record or engaged as contractors, with pay and benefits structured to local law and market practice.

Equal opportunity and other disclosures

Equal opportunity employer. Caliza is an equal opportunity employer. We make employment decisions without regard to race, color, religion, creed, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, age, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital or family status, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We value diverse backgrounds and encourage you to apply even if you don’t meet every listed qualification.

Accommodations. We provide reasonable accommodations to qualified applicants with disabilities and to anyone who needs one during the hiring process. To request an accommodation, contact the recruiting team.

Background screening. Because we handle sensitive financial data and regulated activity, any offer will be contingent on a background check, which may include criminal history, employment and education verification, and sanctions screening, to the extent permitted by law. In the US, we conduct screening in line with the Fair Credit Reporting Act and applicable state and local fair chance laws, and we consider qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records in accordance with those laws.

Work authorization. Candidates must be authorized to work in their country of residence. We are not able to sponsor visas for this role.

Employment terms. For US-based hires, employment with Caliza is at-will. Terms for hires outside the US follow local law.

Applicant privacy. We collect and process applicant personal data solely for purposes of evaluating applications and managing the recruitment process in accordance with applicable data protection laws, including the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), Brazil’s General Data Protection Law (LGPD), Mexico’s Federal Law on the Protection of Personal Data Held by Private Parties (LFPDPPP), the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 (NDPA). We retain personal data only for as long as necessary for these purposes or as required by applicable law. Subject to applicable legal requirements, applicants may request access to, correction or deletion of their personal data, as well as exercise other applicable rights, including restricting or objecting to processing and requesting data portability.

Use of AI in hiring. We may use AI tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications or assessing responses. These tools assist our team but do not replace human judgment, and final hiring decisions are made by people.

Recruitment fraud. Caliza will never ask candidates for payment, banking details, or cryptocurrency during the hiring process. Official communications come only from Caliza email addresses. If you receive a suspicious message claiming to be from us, please report it to our team.

Payment Operations Engineer