Principal Engineer

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 a Principal Individual Contributor (L8), your mission is to advance PPRO’s global payments platform by driving deep technical understanding and architectural innovation across the entire organization. This is a free-floating, non-domain-specific role focused on technology principles and creating scalable, reliable, robust solutions, directly impacting PPRO’s market leadership and long-term strategy.

Your impact will be as follow:

Act as a technical multiplier, leveling up engineering teams and fostering a culture of deep technical excellence.

Define and consistently apply organization-wide engineering principles and best practices, partnering with cross-functional teams (Product, Partnerships, Security, Compliance) to ensure solutions meet standards for resilience, reliability, and business alignment.

Ensure engineering principles and best practices are consistently defined and applied organization-wide, championing high standards for resilience and reliability.

Help to design and develop scalable, reliable and high-performing systems using our core technologies Java/Kotlin in the AWS ecosystem.

Drive continuous improvement and technical strategies with a focus on impact and initiative rather than bureaucracy.

Own the technical advisory group where RFCs around end-to-end code quality, deployment processes, and monitoring in production environments are being discussed and decided on.

Advocate for continuous improvement, driving decisions through data and metrics to align engineering outcomes with business goals.

Pioneer technical strategies that position PPRO as a leader in payments innovation.

Ensure sustainable, high-velocity delivery while maintaining system reliability and performance excellence.

Broad technological fluency with substantial experience in the JVM ecosystem (Java/Kotlin). Recent and meaningful experience with languages like Golang or Python is also acceptable.

Proven experience designing and building distributed systems, microservices, and event-driven architectures.

Expertise in Java/Kotlin development and AWS services (e.g., EKS, Kinesis, SQS, DynamoDB, RDS).

Strong technical leadership skills with a track record of mentoring and guiding engineering teams.

Ability to communicate complex technical concepts effectively to technical and non-technical audiences.

A mindset focused on driving tangible impact and taking initiative.

Background in API security standards and data handling best practices.

Nice-to-haves

Experience in the payments industry, including familiarity with PCI-DSS compliance and payment gateways.

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 €1,000 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 accident insurance, disability insurance, direct insurance (bAV) and travel insurance.

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

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

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.

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.