Software Engineer I

At American Express, we’re building the platforms that power how money moves globally. Modern Money Movement (M3) sits at the centre of that mission, enabling payment journeys across the company, from “Pay Your Amex Bill” and lending experiences to B2B payments, cross-border transactions, and emerging Stablecoin capabilities. We’re looking for engineers who are excited by backend engineering, distributed systems, and solving complex technical challenges at scale. This is an opportunity to work on systems that process real financial transactions used by millions of customers and businesses worldwide.

As a Software Engineer in M3, you’ll contribute to the development of highly scalable, event-driven payment systems that support critical financial workflows across the enterprise.

You’ll Help Build Systems That Power:

• Consumer payment journeys
• Lending and loan servicing capabilities
• Business-to-business payments
• Cross-border payment experiences
• Stablecoin-enabled payment capabilities

You’ll work alongside experienced engineers who are passionate about building resilient, high-performance systems and creating a strong engineering culture.

M3 is built using modern backend architecture patterns designed to support highly scalable, resilient, and event-driven payment systems. Our Engineering Approach Includes:

• Event Sourcing
• CQRS
• Event-driven microservices
• Streaming and asynchronous processing patterns

You’ll gain hands-on experience building distributed systems and learn how to design software that is scalable, observable, resilient, and operationally robust.

Our Core Technology Stack Includes:

• Kotlin
• Quarkus
• Kafka
• PostgreSQL
• Gradle

This is a strong opportunity for engineers early in their career to work on meaningful technical problems in a modern engineering environment.

You’ll Gain Exposure To:

• Large-scale distributed systems
• Event-driven architecture patterns
• High-throughput backend engineering
• Financial technology and payment systems
• Modern JVM-based development practices

Most importantly, you’ll work with a team that values mentorship, technical growth, and collaborative problem-solving while building systems that directly power how money moves across the world.

Responsibilities:

• Build and enhance backend services supporting payment capabilities.
• Contribute to event-driven applications and APIs.
• Work as part of an Agile Scrum team, participating in sprint planning, stand-ups, backlog refinement, and retrospectives.
• Collaborate closely with engineers, product partners, and stakeholders to deliver high-quality software incrementally.
• Write clean, maintainable, and well-tested code.
• Participate in code reviews and technical discussions to continuously improve engineering quality.
• Learn modern distributed systems and software engineering practices.
• Help improve platform reliability, performance, and developer experience.
• Support production systems by troubleshooting issues and contributing to operational excellence practices.

Qualifications:

• A foundation in software engineering principles and backend development.
• Experience with Java, Kotlin, or another object-oriented programming language.
• Interest in distributed systems and scalable backend platforms.
• Understanding of software development lifecycle concepts and Agile ways of working.
• Ability to collaborate effectively within a cross-functional Scrum team.
• Problem-solving skills and a willingness to learn new technologies.
• Strong communication skills and a collaborative mindset.
• Curiosity, ownership, and enthusiasm for engineering challenges.

Employment eligibility to work with American Express in the UK is required as the company will not pursue visa sponsorship for these positions.