AI-Native Engineer, Team Lead

About Payoneer Founded in 2005, Payoneer is the global financial platform that removes friction from doing business across borders, with a mission to connect the world’s underserved businesses to a rising global economy. We’re a community with over 2,500 colleagues all over the world, working to serve customers, and partners in over 190 countries and territories. By taking the complexity out of the financial workflows–including everything from global payments and compliance to multi-currency and workforce management, to providing working capital and business intelligence–we give businesses the tools they need to work efficiently worldwide and grow with confidence. What's different about this role No hand-offs. No tickets. No "here's the spec, go build it." You own the problem — from understanding why it exists, through architecture and implementation, to production monitoring. You're part of a small AI Pod, you work directly with the business, and you ship. The code you write on Monday can be in production by Thursday. This is a new way of working at Payoneer. We're not filling a seat in an existing process — we're building the methodology as we go. We want someone who's energized by that, not unsettled by it. About Payoneer Payoneer enables businesses of all sizes to pay and get paid globally — 25M+ customers, 190+ countries, tens of billions of dollars moving through our platform every year. Behind every transaction is a freelancer in Lagos, an SMB in Warsaw, a marketplace in Seoul. When the system works, their business works. We're a listed fintech company (NASDAQ: PAYO) with our core engineering hub. We're actively building AI into how we develop — not as a layer on top of the old way, but as a fundamental rethink. What you'll do • Own the full loop. Understand the business problem, define the solution, architect it, ship it, monitor it. No one hands you a spec. • Build with AI as your primary tool. Claude Code, Cursor, whatever gives you the most leverage. You should be able to do in a day what used to take a team a week. • Co-design with your AI Pod. Work directly with your pod and the business to define decision logic, risk thresholds, and success metrics. You're building capabilities, not features. • Build the harness before you ship. You don't call something done if you can't measure it. Evaluation frameworks aren't optional — they're part of the architecture. • Own production. Monitoring, alerting, observability — these go in on day one, not after the first incident. You're on call for what you build. • Raise the bar. When you see a better way, say so. In design reviews, in code, in how the team works. The DNA we're looking for Curious. You explore new models and tools before anyone tells you to. You want to understand how things actually work, not just that they work. Innovative. You don't wait for best practices to exist — you run the experiment and help create them. You iterate fast, share what you learn, and push the boundaries of what's possible. Thinks in workflows, not endpoints. You naturally decompose problems into agentic loops, skills, and orchestrated flows. CRUD with an LLM bolted on isn't a system — you know the difference. You feel the weight of production. When you're designing, you're already thinking about 2am incidents, runaway inference costs, and edge cases that only surface when real money is moving. That instinct — to stress-test your own assumptions before shipping — is just how you think. Full-stack owner. You're comfortable touching the prompt, the RAG pipeline, the orchestrator, and the backend. You move up and down the stack to get the job done. Builder's itch. When you see a repetitive task, or a problem the team has just accepted as "too hard to fix," you can't leave it alone. You go home thinking about it. You come back with a working prototype. Watching people do manually what a system could do makes you uncomfortable — in a productive way. Grounded confidence. You trust your abilities. You don't need sign-off before every decision. You move forward with incomplete information, make a call, and own it. And when you're wrong, you update and move on — no drama, no ego. The gap between where you are and where you want to be is what gets you out of bed. What you bring • Experience shipping production AI systems — not just building them, but watching them run in the real world and fixing what breaks • Real fluency with AI coding tools — not "familiar with," genuinely fast with • Strong eval instincts — you define metrics, build test sets, and don't ship until you can measure • Understanding of agentic architectures: orchestration, multi-step workflows, fallback and error logic • Comfortable across any stack — you go where the right solution is • Honest communication — you flag problems early, give direct feedback, and say what you actually think • Fintech or regulated-environment experience is a bonus; what matters is understanding why "probably fine" isn't acceptable when money is moving We don't require: • A degree • A specific number of years of experience • Mastery of any particular framework How we work — and who fits here Act as our customer's partner on the inside. The freelancer in Lagos, the SMB in Warsaw, the marketplace in Seoul — they're not abstract to you. You learn what they actually need and build what genuinely helps them go further. Their success is the metric that matters. Do it. Own it. You don't wait for permission or hand off problems when they get complicated. You're fearlessly accountable — from the first line of code to the 2am incident. When something ships under your name, you stand behind it. Continuously improve. "Good enough" is temporary. You set a higher standard than your last release, say the hard thing in the design review rather than the post-mortem, and push the people around you to do the same. Build each other up. You lead with humility — strong opinions, held loosely. You make space for different perspectives and actively help the people around you grow, as engineers and as people. We have a genuine no-jerk policy. Directness, collaboration, and respect aren't nice-to-haves here. Why join • Small AI Pod, full ownership — 3–5 people, no bureaucracy, no middle management. Your code goes directly to production. • Real problems at scale — 25M+ customers in 190+ countries depend on these systems. The stakes are real. • You help define the methodology — this is early-stage work within Payoneer. You won't inherit a playbook; you'll write it. • Financial infrastructure that matters — when a business anywhere in the world gets paid, your work is part of why that happened. Payoneer is an equal opportunity employer. We invest in our people's growth and create a collaborative environment where every voice is heard. The Payoneer Ways of Working Act as our customer’s partner on the inside Learning what they need and creating what will help them go further. Do it. Own it. Being fearlessly accountable in everything we do. Continuously improve Always striving for a higher standard than our last. Build each other up Helping each other grow, as professionals and people. If this sounds like a business, a community, and a mission you want to be part of, apply today. We are committed to providing a diverse and inclusive workplace. Payoneer is an equal opportunity employer, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment no matter your race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. If you require reasonable accommodation at any stage of the hiring process, please speak to the recruiter managing the role for any adjustments. Decisions about requests for reasonable accommodation are made on a case-by-case basis.