Engineering Lead II - Contacts & Recipients (Java team)

Company DescriptionWise is a global technology company, building the best way to move and manage the world’s money. Min fees. Max ease. Full speed.Whether people and businesses are sending money to another country, spending abroad, or making and receiving international payments, Wise is on a mission to make their lives easier and save them money.As part of our team, you will be helping us create an entirely new network for the world's money. For everyone, everywhere.More about our mission and what we offer.Job DescriptionThe team you will join: ContactsThe Contacts team is a core team at Wise, dedicated to making adding, finding, and managing your recipients as easy as possible. We own this experience end-to-end: from the scalable platform securing tens of millions of bank accounts customers send to, to the intelligent search algorithms and local integrations (like Pix) that power discovery, all the way to the customer-facing screens where users interact with their counterparties. The team is integral to Wise’s day-to-day operations — if our services go down, Wise goes down.What will you be working on:Reimagining the contacts domain. We need to fundamentally rethink how we model people, businesses, and bank accounts. You and your team own the architecture for this: it’s a complex distributed systems challenge that touches everything: bank accounts, local payment networks, and the next generation of Wise features.Scaling for Wise Platform: This isn't just for the Wise app. Big banks and enterprises use our API, which means our search and validation engines need to be lightning-fast and bulletproof, even when our biggest partners turn on the tap.Defining the product roadmap: You’re not here to just churn through a backlog. You’ll work side-by-side with your Product Manager to figure out what we build next. You’ll be the one making the tough calls between shipping fast, staying secure, and building for the long term.Growing the team: You will start with a large, high-output team with the potential to scale it further.Technical responsibilities:Technical authority: You will act as the primary technical owner for the domain. You must meet the expertise bar of a senior back-end engineer, capable of driving deep architectural discussions and addressing technical debt autonomously.Operational excellence: Drive initiatives to improve reliability and security. You will ensure the team proactively manages the health of the services that process millions of critical customer data points daily.Leadership responsibilities:Team autonomy: Lead, mentor, and coach a team of 9 engineers, building a culture where the team can deliver quickly and reliably without your day-to-day intervention in every task.People development: You are responsible for the performance and career growth of your engineers, identifying future leaders who can help you scale this domain.Cross-functional alignment: Work closely with Regional teams, Wise Platform, and other functions to ensure our roadmap aligns with the wider Wise strategy. You will help the team navigate complex priorities and make trade-offs between speed, risk, and quality.What do you need?Strong technical background: Expert in backend engineering (Java ecosystem preferred) with a track record of designing complex, distributed systems. You understand the difference between "working code" and "scalable architecture."Leadership experience: You have led high-performing teams (hiring, performance management, coaching). You know how to manage a large team by delegating effectively to senior engineers.Product mindset: You understand the "why" behind the "what." You can map technical efforts directly to business goals and customer value.Strategic thinking: You can switch between reviewing a Pull Request and planning the 12-month technical strategy for a critical business domain.Communication: Excellent communicator, capable of articulating technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.Nice to haves:Experience in fintech, payments, or "Identity/Graph" data domains.Experience building high-throughput APIs for enterprise/platform clients.Previous experience scaling a domain from a single team into multiple squads.Additional InformationFor everyone, everywhere. We're people building money without borders  — without judgement or prejudice, too. We believe teams are strongest when they are diverse, equitable and inclusive.We're proud to have a truly international team, and we celebrate our differences. Inclusive teams help us live our values and make sure every Wiser feels respected, empowered to contribute towards our mission and able to progress in their careers.If you want to find out more about what it's like to work at Wise visit Wise.Jobs.Keep up to date with life at Wise by following us on LinkedIn and Instagram.