Staff Java Engineer - Merchant Fraud Prevention

Adyen is a financial technology platform providing payments, data, and financial products. This Staff Java Engineer role in the Merchant Fraud Prevention group focuses on defining technical architecture, leading cross-team engineering efforts, and integrating machine learning and LLM-based solutions for fraud detection.

• Strategic Architecture & Technical Direction: Own the multi-year technical roadmap for the group. Design and evolve high-throughput, low-latency distributed systems capable of processing real-time merchant transactions, integrating complex machine learning models, and handling massive big data pipelines.
• Leadership Partnership (The Right Hand): Partner closely with the Group Engineering Director/Manager to evaluate organizational health, identify systematic engineering bottlenecks, and align technical investments directly with merchant protection goals.
• Product Strategy: Proactively shape the strategic roadmap in partnership with the Director of Engineering, other Staff Engineers, and Product teams.
• Cross-Team Alignment: Standardize engineering practices, architectural patterns, and quality bars across 2–3 distinct fraud-focused teams. Drive clarity out of ambiguity when new fraud vectors or product requirements emerge.
• Talent Multiplier & Mentorship: Actively sponsor and mentor senior engineers within the group. Design paths for their growth, model what world-class engineering looks like, and cultivate a culture of rigorous peer review and psychological safety.
• ML & Data Infrastructure Evolution: Collaborate with Data Science and ML Engineering to ensure our infrastructure seamlessly supports rapid model deployment, feature stores, and real-time inference without compromising transaction speed or system reliability.

• Technical leader: track record of defining long-term technical strategy through strong architectural thinking, sound technical judgment, and excellent communication rather than organizational authority.
• Systems Architect: You have extensive experience designing and operating large-scale distributed systems that prioritize reliability, performance, and resilience in production environments.
• Compliance Minded: You have a deep understanding of security-by-design, specifically as it relates to KYC, identity verification, and regulated data handling.
• Proactive relationship-builder: led partnerships across Engineering, Product, Compliance, and ML Engineering to align technical direction, drive clarity through ambiguity, and balance immediate product needs with long-term platform investments.
• Applied AI Experience: You have experience in building production-grade interfaces powered by LLMs, including harnesses, policy enforcement, evals, RAG architectures and secure data handling.