whitelark.io

About the role:

No legacy, no bureaucracy, no corporate b**t — just you and a small but incredibly strong engineering team making the right technical decisions together.

This is payment infrastructure, so the bar for reliability, security, and operational excellence is high. You won't just "keep the lights on" — you'll help design, build, and evolve the platform.

AI-first. We're AI-first across the board, engineering included: routine operational work is automated through AI agents and AI tooling, IaC and runbooks are written and maintained with AI. We're not just "aware of AI" — we're building infrastructure that AI agents can safely operate and change.
 

What you'll do:

• Infrastructure as Code: Design and evolve Terraform modules for AWS (composite modules, accounts as code), and build a multi-environment foundation across non-prod / pre-prod / prod.
• Kubernetes: Operate and evolve EKS clusters — workloads, namespaces, resources, autoscaling, and network policies.
• CI/CD: Build, maintain, and improve GitHub Actions pipelines — faster, more reliable delivery with fewer manual steps.
• GitOps / Delivery: Manage Helm charts and ArgoCD for declarative Kubernetes deployments.
• Secrets & Access: Own secrets management, rotation, least-privilege access, and keep secrets out of code.
• Observability: Build metrics, dashboards, and alerting (Amazon Managed Prometheus + Amazon Managed Grafana), define SLOs, and improve incident response.
• Security & Networking: Manage IAM, environment separation, and secure access with Okta and Twingate.
• Databases (Operations): Operate PostgreSQL (RDS) and Redshift — configuration, backups, secret rotation, and operational reliability.
• Reliability: Drive production readiness, capacity planning, cost optimization, HA where it matters, and operational runbooks.
   

Stack:

• Cloud: AWS (EKS, RDS, IAM, VPC, etc.)
• IaC: Terraform
• Containers: Docker, Kubernetes (EKS), Helm
• GitOps: ArgoCD
• CI/CD: GitHub Actions
• Observability: Amazon Managed Prometheus (AMP), Amazon Managed Grafana (AMG)
• Database: PostgreSQL (RDS), AWS Redshift (OLAP)
• Auth / Access: Okta, Twingate
• AI: AI-first — active use of AI tools and AI agents in daily engineering work.
   

Requirements:

Must have

• 5+ years in DevOps, SRE, or Platform Engineering.
• Production AWS experience (EKS, IAM, VPC, RDS).
• Terraform — modules, remote state, multi-environment infrastructure.
• Kubernetes — production operations, Helm.
• CI/CD — building, maintaining, and improving pipelines.
• Linux, networking, scripting (Bash + Python or Go).
• Secrets management and security fundamentals (IAM, least privilege).
• Observability — metrics, logs, and alerting (Prometheus/Grafana or equivalent).
• AI fluency — actively uses AI tools (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, or similar) in day-to-day engineering work. Not just "aware of AI" — uses them to multiply productivity while applying engineering judgment to the output.
• Proactivity — identifies problems before they surface, proposes solutions, and drives them to completion. Doesn't wait to be told what to do.
• English: confident reading and listening is a must. Good spoken English is a strong plus.
   

Nice to have

• FinTech, payments, or banking infrastructure experience.
• Experience building toward or maintaining PCI DSS compliance.
• ArgoCD / GitOps.
• Amazon Managed Prometheus / Grafana.
• AWS Redshift.
• Multi-account AWS environments with clear non-prod / pre-prod / prod separation.

No legacy, no bureaucracy — just you and a small but incredibly strong engineering team making the right technical decisions together. A chance to go deep into fintech (card payments, compliance, settlements) and help shape the product architecture.
 

Finance focus. This role sits within our Finance domain: settlements, reconciliation, bank integrations, and integration with the core banking system. You'll go deep into the money flow — how funds move, settle, and reconcile across the gateway, processor, card schemes, and banks.
 

Fintech experience is essential. We need someone who already understands payments and fintech — this isn't a domain you can pick up on the side. We expect proactivity and ownership: become the person the team relies on for settlement and reconciliation logic.
 

Important: we need a strong engineer with a deep technical background. The engineering team is top-tier, and the bar is high. We're not looking for average — we're looking for someone who makes decisions independently and owns the outcome.
 

What you'll do:

Backend (Kotlin)

• Financial Core: Build and evolve the double-entry ledger (immutable), settlement engine (MDR calculation, netting, payouts), pricing engine (IC++ / blended), and rolling reserve management.
• Integrations: Build REST API integrations with payment gateways, card processors, KYC/KYB providers, and SEPA / SWIFT payouts.
• Webhook Processing: Build and maintain reliable ingestion and processing of vendor webhooks.
• BPMN Workflows: Develop Camunda 8 workflows using service tasks, user tasks, and DMN decision tables for merchant onboarding, AML investigations, dispute management, and settlements.
• Compliance: Implement transaction monitoring rules, sanctions screening integrations, and SAR workflows.
• API: Build REST APIs for the Merchant Portal and Operations Panel.

Frontend (Next.js)

• Merchant Portal: Build dashboards (transactions, volumes, conversion), settlement history, payouts, chargebacks, API key management, webhook settings, and onboarding flows.
• Ops Panel: Build tools for AML case management, disputes, treasury, compliance, underwriting, and merchant management.
• Developer Portal: Build and maintain API documentation (OpenAPI), integration guides, and sandbox environments.
   

General

• Reconciliation: Build and evolve the multi-layer reconciliation engine (gateway ↔ processor ↔ scheme ↔ bank ↔ safeguarding).
• Reporting: Build regulatory reporting, card scheme reporting (Visa / Mastercard), and financial reporting.
• Testing: We're AI-first when it comes to testing — fully automated coverage at every level: unit, integration, and E2E. No manual QA — you write code, you write tests. Build E2E coverage for the full payment flow (auth → capture → settlement → payout), vendor integration tests, and BPMN process tests through the Camunda API.
   

Requirements:

Must have

• 6+ years of Kotlin or Java (Spring Boot) — REST APIs, JPA/Hibernate, transaction management.
• 3+ years of Next.js / React — SSR, TypeScript, state management.
• PostgreSQL — queries, migrations, indexes, JSONB.
• REST API design — versioning, error handling, idempotency.
• Git and CI/CD.
• Webhook processing and event-driven architecture.
• Okta / OAuth2 / OpenID Connect.

Fintech / payments experience — a must, not a nice-to-have. You should already have hands-on experience with settlements, reconciliation, bank integrations, and integration with a core banking system.

AI fluency — actively integrates AI tools (Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, or similar) into daily engineering work. Not just "aware of AI" — uses them to multiply productivity while applying strong engineering judgment to the output.

Proactivity — identifies problems before they surface, proposes solutions, drives them to completion. Doesn't wait to be told what to do.

English — confident reading and listening is a must. Good spoken English is a strong plus.
 

Nice to have

• Understanding of double-entry accounting.
• Camunda / BPMN experience.
• Tailwind CSS and shadcn/ui.