Software Engineer, Payments Product Lead

As the founding Software Engineer and Payments Product Lead at Aptos Labs, you build the first payment infrastructure unit of a high-performance Layer 1 blockchain designed for financial services. You are hire number one of the engineering team, and you define the technical agenda of a ring-fenced business with its own P&L, an exclusive global settlement partnership already signed, and first-party products already shipped. You report directly into commercial leadership and your engineering roadmap becomes the business roadmap.

What you'll do

• Spec, ship, and run the Aptos Payment API, the single integration point for businesses, wrapping partner infrastructure today with an orchestration engine routing across a licensed partner network as the business scales.
• Own partner-facing engineering: requirements intake, integration leadership, and technical diligence with banks, EMIs, PSPs, stablecoin issuers, and e-wallet platforms, running external technical relationships as a peer.
• Build the trust infrastructure: revenue attribution and reconciliation systems, single-window KYC/KYB integration, a testnet sandbox for prospects, and native-asset-only settlement policy without bridges.
• Own the payments side of the integration seam with the trading team, routing corridor FX through their RFQ liquidity venue, defining the API contract between systems, and making the handoff invisible to clients.
• Hire and lead the first two engineers on the team, growing only as revenue triggers fire, and make build-vs-buy decisions on orchestration components and KYC tooling with written memos at each gate.

What you bring

• 8+ years building payment infrastructure at production scale in PSP or orchestrator-class systems: cross-border rails, on/off-ramps, virtual accounts, reconciliation.
• Hands-on chain-native settlement experience: stablecoin rails, ramp integrations, wallet infrastructure; Move or Rust a plus, with strong engineering judgment on any stack.
• Front-facing gravitas with banks, issuers, and regulated partners; a track record leading external technical relationships, not just internal roadmaps.
• Product engineer's instincts: you build bottoms-up from what clients and partners need, treat existing internal products as assets to resell, and ship code before hiring people better than you at parts of it.

Nice to have

• APAC corridor experience: e-wallet ecosystems, QR rails, regional licensing landscapes.
• FX and market-structure fluency to partner effectively with the trading team on the RFQ integration.
• Working familiarity with payments regulation such as money transmission, MiCA, or Singapore PS Act; enough to design with counsel, not practice law.
• A prior 0-1 experience: founding engineer, first technical hire, or product line owner from blank page to revenue.

What we offer

• Base salary of $160k-$260k, determined by experience and location.
• Protocol token grants.
• 100% insurance premium coverage for medical, dental, and vision for you and your dependents (US employees).
• Equipment of your choice.
• Flexible vacation time, 11 holidays, and floating company days off.
• 401k matching (US employees).
• In-person and digital events.

About Aptos Labs

Aptos is a high-performance Layer 1 blockchain designed for financial services, built by some of the original creators of the Diem blockchain. The company is consolidating its commercial efforts into one financial services company spanning payments, tokenization, and trading, with payments as the first chartered business unit: a ring-fenced operation with its own P&L, an exclusive global settlement partnership already signed, and clear evidence gates at 90 days, 6 months, and 24 months.