Senior Engineering Manager - Card Payments

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:

As Senior Engineering Manager for the Card Payments domain, you will lead the technical direction, architecture and delivery of PPRO’s local card-rail portfolio from our São Paulo hub. Your goal is to deliver highly available, scheme-compliant card processing that helps Payment Service Providers (PSPs) and merchants sell globally.

You will partner closely with Product, Security, Risk & Compliance and Commercial teams to keep transactions flowing smoothly, safely and profitably. Combining a clear technical vision with hands-on leadership, you will coach engineering managers, mentor engineers, improve delivery practices and build a culture of ownership across the Card Payments teams. You will also stay close to the code, reviewing and writing it, and working with senior and staff engineers on architecture decisions.

This is your chance to shape a core domain inside PPRO, building, learning and shipping alongside talented, diverse teams on two continents.

Mission: Build a world-class local card-processing platform that maximises approval rates, keeps fraud and cost low and gives our customers easy access to local card schemes.

What you will be doing:

Shape the engineering strategy

• Together with senior, staff and principal engineers, set the technical direction for card rails, with a focus on low latency, high resilience and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance.

• Help design a future-proof, cloud-native platform with event-driven services and real-time data pipelines.

• Lead architecture discussions and code reviews, and guide the team to the right technical decisions.

• Support innovation in tokenisation, network tokens, intelligent retries and Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) orchestration.

Deliver engineering excellence

• Drive continuous delivery and “DevOps as a practice”, where every engineer owns quality and testing.

• Improve how your teams plan and deliver, with clear priorities, small increments and a regular release cadence.

• Embed observability and automated compliance into the development lifecycle, to reduce incident recovery time and audit effort.

• Lead and grow high-performing teams.

• Hire, coach and retain top talent in São Paulo, building autonomy and ownership.

• Coach engineering managers and senior engineers so they grow as leaders and take ownership of decisions and outcomes.

• Act as a mentor and sponsor, helping engineers grow and reach their potential.

• Contribute to the engineering culture in São Paulo while aligning with global standards.

Drive operational excellence

• Work to reduce authorisation latency, increase issuer approval rates and optimise interchange costs through smart routing and data insights.

• Own KPIs for uptime, latency, error rates and cost per transaction, and use them to guide continuous improvement.

• Work closely with Risk, Legal and Partnerships to meet compliance, security, regulatory and card scheme standards.

• Implement automated risk controls and adaptive fraud-mitigation pipelines.

Collaborate with key stakeholders

• Build strong working relationships with other engineering teams across locations, and involve them early when designing shared solutions.

• Represent São Paulo engineering in global engineering forums.

• Together with your Product counterpart, work with Commercial and Partnerships to unlock new markets and revenue streams.

• Engage PSPs and strategic merchants to turn real-world problems into scalable technical solutions.

What we’re looking for:

• Proven experience leading engineering managers or multiple teams in an API-first, high-integrity environment, ideally in payments or another regulated industry.

• A track record of improving how teams deliver, for example through better planning, processes or decision-making, with clear results.

• Strong coaching skills and experience helping managers grow into stronger leaders.

• Deep experience with cloud-native microservice architectures (Java, Spring Boot and AWS), and strong knowledge of Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD), security best practice and observability.

• Hands-on technical skills. You can write and review production code, lead architecture discussions and guide engineers to good decisions.

• Able to make decisions when needed and bring people along with you. You make trade-offs clear and use data to support them.

• Able to influence without authority and align teams you don’t manage around shared goals.

• Fluent English and Portuguese, and clear, direct communication across cultures and time zones.

Nice to haves:

• An understanding of PSP economics, LatAm acquiring and global compliance drivers.

• Hands-on experience with card scheme integrations, clearing and settlement, disputes or PCI DSS.
  

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 3,000 BRL 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 life insurance, health insurance + dental plan and travel insurance.

Meal vouchers - BRL 54/ day - Enjoy a moment of conviviality and a good and balanced meal thanks to your meal vouchers. You will also have the choice between meal allowance, supermarket voucher or both (splitting the total value in two)

Enhance Family Leave - We understand the importance of family - that's why we offer enhanced family leave to support you during key life moments.

Transportation Voucher - we will cover your costs of commute!

Gym membership - PPRO helps contribute towards the costs of your gym membership, supporting your physical fitness journey while easing the burden on your wallet

New Value (Deals & Coupon Platform) - Get attractive discounts to restaurants, stores and events

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.

SESC - private institution that makes available Education, Health, Culture and Recreational programs and events and provides Social Assistance to our employees and their dependents.

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 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 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 refer to our Candidate Privacy Policy.