Lead Processing Development Engineer

About Unlimit

Unlimit is the global financial infrastructure for the borderless agentic economy. Designed to bridge the gap between fragmented local markets and the future of autonomous commerce, Unlimit provides the programmable operating layer for the world’s most ambitious businesses.

Through an integrated technology stack, the platform unifies global payment acceptance, programmable financial accounts, and digital asset rails into a singular financial layer. By mapping hyper-local payment ecosystems directly into its architecture, Unlimit enables businesses to move value and settle transactions instantly across continents.

Built on decades of hard-won regulatory depth and an extensive global license portfolio, the platform provides direct access to a massive global infrastructure. With major hubs in London, San Francisco, Singapore, São Paulo, and Mexico City, Unlimit is building the infrastructure that makes global expansion a matter of code, not geography.

About the role

We are looking for a senior engineer to become the technical lead of our card processing platform. You will own the SmartVista ecosystem end to end (FrontEnd and BackOffice), set the standards for how processing is built, changed and operated, and lead the work of finding and closing gaps in our processes, configuration and controls.

This is not a pure support or configuration role. We expect you to replace manual work with automation and to put AI to practical use in processing operations: anomaly detection, intelligent alerting, automated root-cause analysis and AI-assisted analysis of scheme specifications and transaction data.

The role combines card processing expertise + technical leadership + engineering (backend, scripting,

integrations) + automation and AI adoption.

What you will do

Technical leadership and platform ownership

Own the end-to-end architecture of the processing ecosystem (SmartVista FrontEnd and BackOffice,

interfaces, HSM, scheme connectivity) and make architecture and technology-stack decisions

Act as the technical lead and senior escalation point for processing engineers; set engineering

standards, review solutions

Lead major incidents, coordinate the response with internal teams, the vendor and card schemes,

and drive post-incident reviews to permanent fixes

Manage the relationship with the SmartVista vendor on releases, patches, defects and change

requests

Process ownership and gap remediation

Map the current processing processes (authorisation, clearing, settlement, disputes, reconciliation,

reporting, release and change management, monitoring and on-call) and identify gaps, single points of failure and manual workarounds

Build and run a remediation plan: define owners, deadlines and measurable outcomes, and follow

through to closure

Introduce and maintain operational standards: runbooks, release and change procedures, incident

and problem management, SLAs and KPIs (e.g. availability, approval rate, incident resolution time)

Make sure scheme mandates and regulatory changes are tracked, assessed and implemented on

time, and that the evidence of compliance is documented

Processing development and scheme compliance

Deliver the technical implementation of new card products and services (acquiring and issuing) for

Visa, Mastercard, UnionPay, American Express and other schemes

Translate scheme mandates and specifications into technical solutions, and lead certification projects

with the schemes

Configure and develop SmartVista FrontEnd and BackOffice products, services and business rules
Prepare technical requirements for system upgrades; test and install releases and patches with

minimal downtime

Diagnose complex issues across authorisation, clearing and settlement flows and drive them to root

cause

Set up and maintain payment system emulators and test environments; take part in go-live and pilot

activities

Maintain clear technical documentation of the platform and implementation procedures

Monitoring and observability: design, development and implementation

Design and build an end-to-end monitoring framework for the processing platform, covering

infrastructure, applications, interfaces and business metrics

Develop and implement real-time monitoring of:

– authorisation flows: approval and decline rates by scheme, BIN, issuer country, merchant, MCC and response code – response times, timeouts and stand-in processing

– scheme, issuer and HSM connectivity and host availability

– transaction volumes and abnormal spikes or drops

Develop and implement monitoring of back-office processes:

– clearing file generation, submission and acknowledgement (Visa, Mastercard and other schemes) – incoming scheme files and reports, settlement positions and reconciliation breaks

– end-of-day and batch jobs, interchange and fee calculation, chargeback and dispute deadlines

Monitor scheme compliance indicators (e.g. decline-code usage, data-integrity edits, excessive

retries, fraud and dispute ratios) to catch issues before they become scheme non-compliance or fines

Define thresholds, alerting rules and escalation paths; integrate alerts with on-call, incident

management and messaging tools

Build operational dashboards for engineering, operations and management, and define the related

KPIs and SLAs

Develop health checks, synthetic test transactions and log-based monitoring for SmartVista

components

Continuously tune monitoring to reduce false alerts, and turn incident findings into new checks and

controls

Automation and AI

Identify manual and repetitive processes and automate them, including:

– reconciliation and settlement – scheme file exchange and report submission

– testing, regression and release management

– monitoring and alerting

Build CI/CD pipelines and automated deployment for processing components and configuration
Design and deliver AI-driven solutions for processing operations, for example:

– anomaly detection on transaction flows, decline patterns and fraud signals – intelligent alerting that reduces noise and escalates what matters

– automated root-cause analysis of declines and incidents

– AI assistants or agents that analyse scheme specifications, mandates and authorisation messages and flag deviations

Introduce test automation and regression frameworks for scheme messages and processing flows
Promote the safe use of AI tools across the team, with appropriate controls for data security, PCI DSS

and human oversight of changes to production

What you bring

6+ years of hands-on experience in card processing, covering the full transaction lifecycle:

authorisation, clearing, settlement, chargebacks and reconciliation

At least 2 years in a senior, lead or architect role, with a track record of owning a processing

platform and leading engineers, directly or as a technical lead

Strong practical experience with SmartVista (FrontEnd and/or BackOffice); deep experience with a

comparable platform (e.g. Way4, TranzWare) may be considered

Proven experience of improving processes: finding operational gaps, designing controls and

delivering a remediation plan to completion

Certification experience with Visa and Mastercard and the ability to read and apply scheme

specifications and rules (ISO 8583, Visa Base I/II, Mastercard IPM/CIS)

Hands-on automation skills: Python, SQL/PL/SQL, Bash; experience with CI/CD tools (e.g. GitLab CI,

Jenkins), test automation and API testing (e.g. Postman)

Practical experience applying AI or ML in production work, such as anomaly detection, LLM-based

tools or agents, or AI-assisted analysis and coding, and a clear view of their limits and risks

Working knowledge of Oracle DB, WebLogic, Linux, REST/SOAP web services and HTTP
Experience with scheme tools: Visa Edit Package, VCX, Mastercard File Express (MFE) and scheme

test tools and emulators (e.g. Mastercard MAX, Visa test systems)

Good understanding of e-commerce and digital payments: EMV 3-D Secure, tokenisation

(VTS/MDES), Apple Pay / Google Pay, recurring payments, AVS

Knowledge of card technologies and security: EMV, contactless, HSM (Thales), key management, PCI

DSS

Experience with release and change management in a 24/7 production environment
Fluent English (B2+) for daily communication with card schemes, vendors and international teams

What we offer

A key role with real ownership of a business-critical platform and visible impact on approval rates,

stability and time to market

The mandate and support to modernise processing with automation and AI
Competitive salary and performance-based rewards
Paid vacation, sick leave and public holidays
Flexible working hours and modern equipment
An international team of payments professionals in a fast-growing fintech

Join Unlimit Team now! Unlimit is an equal opportunity employer. We believe passionately that employing a diverse workforce is central to our success. We make recruiting decisions based on your experience and skills. We welcome applications from all members of society irrespective of age, sex, disability, sexual orientation, race, religion or belief.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses and identifying potential inconsistencies or verification signals in application materials based on available information. 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 contact us.

Περιγραφή θέσης