Software Engineer, Backend (Payments)
London
Engineering – Payments /
Full time /
Hybrid
Create the future of travel with us
Whether it’s to visit the people closest to us, starting an exciting adventure, or a career-defining business trip, travel is an essential part of our lives. Yet we've all experienced the aches and pains of getting to our destination. Today, more than 4 billion airline passengers rely on technology that hasn't kept up with the expectations of the modern connected traveller.
That’s why we’ve started to rebuild the infrastructure that underpins the travel industry. We’re on a mission to unravel travel — simplifying systems and building the tools that will make the future of travel effortless. Central to this mission is ensuring seamless, secure, and reliable payment experiences, which are crucial for every transaction and a cornerstone of trust in our platform.
We were part of Y Combinator S18's cohort and we are backed by Benchmark, Blossom, Index Ventures, and Kima Ventures. A fantastic set of investors that has helped build some of the world's largest companies.
Our team in London is growing, and we’re looking for talented people to join us on our journey.
Payments at Duffel
The Payments team are looking after all of the core infrastructure that powers any kind of financial transactions on the Duffel platform. This ranges from cash-based systems to settle and reconcile transactions with suppliers distributed globally, to our card processing infrastructure, to commission tracking and payout system. Our goal is to build primitives that can be leveraged by the various vertical teams at Duffel (Flights, Stays, soon Cars) so they can focus on delivering seamless customer experiences.
What you’ll do
As a Software Engineer on our Payments team, you'll be at the forefront of designing and building the robust, scalable, and secure payment infrastructure that powers all transactions across our platform.
You'll tackle challenges like:
- Designing resilient and scalable systems for reconciliation, reporting, and financial operations.
- Integrating a variety of global payment gateways and VCC issuers.
- Implementing best-in-class security practices for our tokenisation proxy and PCI environment.
- Evolving our fraud detection and prevention systems.
What we're looking for in you
- A passion for designing and building fantastic APIs, delivering great developer experiences to go with it.
- An interest in working with Elixir; this is what we mostly work with. Previous experience isn't necessary, and learning on the job is absolutely fine. What's more important is your general engineering ability rather than your knowledge of a particular language or framework.
- A high bar in code quality and API design.
- Opinions on what good engineering standards and processes look like as we define ours at Duffel.
- Big-picture thinking – you can make trade-offs on technical work streams against business impact.
- Fantastic communication skills. You're able to articulate what you're working on and why to the team in a clear and structured way.
- You thrive in a collaborative environment. You believe in your own methods but keep an open mind, taking suggestions and feedback onboard as well.
Bonus points if you have:
- Experience working with payment systems, payment gateways (e.g., Stripe, Adyen, Braintree), or fintech platforms.
- A strong understanding of payment security principles, compliance standards (like PCI DSS), or fraud management.
- Experience in travel, flights, hotels, or cars.
What you can expect from us
We're dedicated to your personal growth. Our environment is comfortable both physically and in that our ears are always open to any ideas, concerns, and questions. We believe that everyone should have pride in their work, taking full ownership of it and its impact. That's why everyone who joins Duffel owns a share of the company.
We are an equal opportunities employer. We believe that the key to our success is employing a diverse team; that's why recruitment decisions are only based on your experience and skills. We value your ability to problem solve and build amazing things, so we welcome applications from everyone – regardless of age, sex, disability, sexual orientation, race, religion, or belief.
Note to recruitment agencies
Duffel does not accept speculative CV's from external parties. Any unsolicited CV's sent to us will be treated as property of Duffel, and any attached terms and conditions associated with these CV's will be null and void.