Principal Engineer, Risk

WEX is a global commerce platform and payments technology leader that helps businesses solve operational complexities such as employee benefits, fleet management, mobilization, and streamlined payments. Our mission is to simplify the business of running a business-empowering customers to focus on what matters most.

We are on an ambitious journey to create a unified, world-class user experience across our ecosystem, leveraging customer-driven innovations and cutting-edge technologies across big data, AI, cloud platforms, and risk management.

We are seeking a Principal Software Engineer - Risk Engineering with strong experience delivering machine learning based systems, to provide deep technical leadership across architecture, engineering, and strategic direction for our global Risk technology initiatives.

As a senior technical leader within the Risk Engineering organization, you will shape the vision, architecture, and execution of a modern, cloud-native risk platform that underpins WEX's ability to scale securely, accelerate time-to-market, and enable innovation across payments and financial services. You will drive the design and development of highly available, intelligent, and extensible systems that power risk operations, credit underwriting, and financial risk management.

This role requires exceptional technical depth, strategic foresight, and the ability to influence across a matrixed enterprise. You will be a trusted advisor to executive leadership, mentor senior engineers, and play a pivotal role in building the next generation of risk technology at WEX.

This position reports to the Senior Director of Risk Engineering and can be based in San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, or Portland, Maine (HQ).

• Architectural Ownership - Define, design, and evolve the enterprise-wide architecture for WEX's Risk Platform, ensuring scalability, extensibility, resilience, and alignment with long-term business strategy.

• Strategic Technology Leadership - Partner with senior leadership across Risk, Compliance, Data, and AI to translate business priorities into robust technical roadmaps. Shape near-term and long-term technical vision, balancing innovation with operational excellence.

• Platform Development - Lead the design and implementation of core risk services, from data ingestion and feature engineering to machine learning-driven decisioning and monitoring. Ensure high performance, and regulatory compliance.

• Cross-Enterprise Integration - Partner with solutions architecture and product engineering leaders to ensure seamless integration of the Risk Platform into WEX's broader product portfolio.

• Innovation & Modernization - Challenge existing paradigms; champion modern engineering practices, cloud-native design, and open-source adoption to build a best-in-class risk ecosystem.

• Mentorship & Talent Development - Serve as a technical mentor to senior engineers and architects. Raise the bar for engineering excellence, instill a culture of continuous improvement, and help shape a world-class global risk engineering team.

• Operational Excellence - Drive platform reliability through observability, automation, and SRE best practices. Partner with security and compliance teams to maintain robust risk controls while enabling agility.

• Thought Leadership - Represent WEX's technical vision internally and externally. Stay ahead of emerging technologies in cloud, AI/ML, and financial risk, applying them to deliver business impact.

• 15+ years of software engineering and architecture experience, with a proven track record of building and scaling machine learning based systems.

• Expertise in risk systems, financial services, or payments technology would be a strong plus, with experience architecting platforms that integrate risk assessment, credit, and compliance functions.

• Hands-on technical leadership across the full SDLC, from architecture and development to production operations. Strong focus on automation, observability, and reliability engineering.

• Strong understanding of data engineering, feature pipelines, and ML/AI scoring for risk modeling and decisioning both in online and offline environments.

• Exceptional ability to influence strategy and drive adoption of technology initiatives across a matrixed enterprise.

• Demonstrated success mentoring senior engineers and architects; talent magnet with the ability to attract, develop, and retain top-tier technical talent.

• Strong business acumen with the ability to connect technology decisions to business outcomes.

• Excellent communication skills; able to articulate complex technical vision to executives, engineers, and cross-functional partners.

• Advanced degree (MS/PhD) in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field strongly preferred.