Senior Engineering Manager – Domestic Wires & Real-time Payments

About the Role

Wire transfers trace their roots back to the telegraph, early systems built to move information and eventually money across long distances with speed and certainty. That legacy still defines how wires work today: they are fast, final, and effectively immutable. Once a transaction is sent, it cannot be undone.

This makes wires some of the most exacting systems in modern finance. They power critical moments for businesses, including payroll, large vendor payments, and capital movement, where precision, reliability, and trust are essential. When they work, they’re invisible. When they don’t, the consequences are immediate.

At Mercury, wires and real-time payments sit at the core of how businesses move money. The Domestic Wires & RTP team builds the systems behind secure, compliant, and reliable money movement, enabling customers to move significant amounts of capital with confidence. These systems must balance speed with safety, scale with strict controls, and product flexibility with regulatory requirements.

As instant payments become the expectation rather than the exception, the importance and complexity of this work continues to grow. And as Mercury pursues a bank charter, this team is at the leading edge of building the infrastructure and controls required to operate bank-grade payments systems. We’re looking for a seasoned engineering leader to guide the Domestic Wires & RTP team through its next stage of growth. This role will be the senior frontline manager in the payment rails group: they will be expected to grow with the domain as new payment capabilities and teams emerge.

As part of this role, you will:

• Lead a team of 7+ backend and full-stack engineers
• Hire, mentor, and retain high-performing engineers across experience levels
• Help shape the organization structure as the payment rails group scales
• Coach emerging leaders within the group
• Drive predictable execution against company and product goals
• Foster a healthy, engaging, and high-performing team environment
• Uphold a high bar for technical quality, reliability, and system stability
• Align engineering work with Mercury’s values and long-term strategy
• Partner closely with product and design to identify and prioritize high-impact work
• Collaborate across teams to build cohesive products and simpler, more maintainable systems
• Balance new development with ongoing maintenance and operational excellence

The ideal candidate for the role:

• Has 5+ years of experience managing software engineering teams at multiple organizations (experience leading remote-first, distributed teams is a plus)
• Has been hired as an external manager previously and knows how to gain domain knowledge to have positive impact quickly
• Experience operating in high-responsibility/high-impact domains
• Comfortable with ambiguity and growing scope
• Track record of leading through cross-functional and cross-team coordination
• Brings strong technical judgment and credibility: you’ll interview at a similar technical depth as senior ICs
• Is familiar with our tech stack (especially Haskell), or excited to learn it
• Has experience in finance, fintech, or banking* systems (payments experience is a plus)