Engineering Director

Engineering Director - Local Cards & Site Lead BRL 200,000 - 250,000 Join to apply for the Engineering Director - Local Cards & Site Lead role at PPRO At PPRO, our mission is to simplify access to local payment methods and our vision is to enable the sale of goods and services to anyone in the world using their preferred way to pay. We empower partners such as Ant Group, PayPal and Stripe to access new markets, connect with more customers, and accelerate their growth. Our strength lies in our diverse global team with 50+ nationalities and 10+ international locations – all united around one goal – to deliver the best possible products and services to our partners and customers. While our company mission is to keep innovating global commerce, our internal mission is #chooseaction, #beopen, #thinkcustomer, #gofurther and #wintogether. The Purpose As Engineering Director for the Card Processing Domain, you will own the end‑to‑end technical strategy, architecture, and execution of PPRO’s local card‑rail portfolio while acting as the Engineering site lead for our São Paulo hub, including supporting teams outside of your domain. Your mission is to deliver a highly available, scheme‑compliant card processing enabling PSPs and merchants to sell globally. You’ll partner closely with Product, Security, Risk & Compliance, and Commercial teams to keep transactions flowing smoothly, safely, and profitably. Blending big‑picture vision with hands‑on leadership, you’ll mentor engineers, uplift delivery practices, and cultivate a culture of ownership and innovation across approximately 40 colleagues in Brazil and beyond. This is your chance to be the “CTO” of a 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, minimises fraud and cost, and gives customers seamless access to local card schemes. What You Will Be Doing Define and Lead Engineering Strategy: Set technical direction for card rails, ensuring low latency, high resilience, and PCI‑DSS compliance. Architect a future‑proof, cloud‑native platform: Design event‑driven services and real‑time data pipelines. Champion innovation: Advance tokenisation, network‑tokens, intelligent retries, and SCA orchestration. Drive continuous delivery and “DevOps as a practice”: Ensure quality and testing is owned by every engineer. Embed observability and automated compliance into the SDLC: Reduce incident MTTR and audit effort. Lead and scale a high‑performing team: Hire, coach, and retain top talent in Sao Paulo, fostering autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Act as mentor and sponsor: Help engineers grow and fulfil their potential. As site lead, nurture local culture and community outreach: Align with global standards. Drive operational excellence: Cut auth latency, uplift issuer approvals, and optimise interchange costs through smart routing and data insights. Own KPIs for uptime, latency, error rates, and cost per transaction: Use metrics to guide continuous improvement. Ensure Security & Compliance: Work hand‑in‑glove with Risk, Legal, and Partnerships to meet compliance, security and regulatory and scheme standards. Implement automated risk controls and adaptive fraud‑mitigation pipelines. Collaborate with key stakeholders: Work with Product, Commercial, and Partnerships to unlock new markets and revenue streams. Engage PSPs and strategic merchants: Translate real‑world pain points into scalable technical solutions. What We Are Looking For Proven record leading engineering teams in an API‑first, high‑integrity environment and ideally in a payments environment, or similar regulated space. Comfortable switching from strategic roadmap reviews to deep‑dive architecture and sessions when needed. Mastery of cloud‑native, microservice architectures (Java, Springboot and AWS). Strong grounding in CI/CD, security best practice, and observability. Data‑driven mindset; make trade‑offs explicit and optimise for impact. Influence without authority, aligning your team and other functions on shared outcomes. Fluency in English and Portuguese, clear, candid communicator across cultures. Nice To Haves Understanding of PSP economics, LatAm acquiring nuances, and global compliance drivers would be a plus. Hands‑on experience with card scheme integrations, clearing & settlement, disputes, and PCI‑DSS would be advantageous. What We Offer Hybrid working – 3 days a week on site expectation; 30‑day holiday allowance; work from abroad policy for up to another 30 days per year. Learning and Development – 3,000 BRL annual budget for professional growth, leadership cafés, on‑the‑job training, and other opportunities. Insurance – life, health, dental, and travel insurance. Meal vouchers – BRL 54 per day, choice between meal allowance, supermarket voucher or both. Enhanced family leave – support during key life moments. Transportation voucher – cover commute costs. Gym membership support – contribution towards costs. New Value (Deals & Coupon Platform) – attractive discounts to restaurants, stores and events. Mental Health Platform – one‑on‑one therapy, chat therapy, therapist‑led courses, guided meditations. SESC – private institution providing education, health, culture, recreational programs and social assistance to employees and dependents. 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. Seniority Level Director Employment Type Full‑time Job Function Business Development and Sales #J-18808-Ljbffr