Lead System Engineer

Technical Leader For AWS Migration

Paynovate is a Belgium based fintech with more than 80 talented employees. We're building a company where dreams are shaped, where bold initiatives are taken, where your leadership, ownership and ability to follow-through are valued. As a growing e-money institution, we are bringing payment solutions to the next level – and you could be a part of that.

Context

We're in the middle of a major infrastructure evolution — moving from a traditional, bare-metal environment to a modern, scalable AWS setup. The foundations are there, the migration has begun, and now we're looking for a technical leader who can take it further.

This role blends hands-on engineering with technical leadership: guiding a team, shaping architecture, and rolling up your sleeves to solve complex problems. You'll be at the heart of one of our most strategic projects, helping us deliver reliable, secure, and future-ready systems in a high-stakes, regulated environment.

What You'll Do

• Lead the AWS migration: take our mix of on-prem/data center systems and design, plan, and execute the move to AWS.
• Maintain legacy systems until their migration to the cloud.
• Be hands-on: architect, build, fix, and troubleshoot alongside the team.
• Modernize the stack: Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Ansible), Docker, AWS services, MySQL.
• Own compliance: ensure infrastructure meets PCI-DSS and National Bank of Belgium standards.
• Manage databases: backup, recovery, security, performance tuning, and optimization.
• Coach and grow: mentor junior engineers (including a talented but less experienced teammate) and help hire the next one.
• Collaborate cross-team: work with developers to design applications with scalability, reliability, and security in mind, and communicate tech clearly to non-technical stakeholders.
• Troubleshoot software development infrastructure issues, including build, deployment, and test failures.
• Coordinate: help prioritize and follow up on infra-related projects, oversee third-party solutions and service providers.
• Be on-call: shared 24/7 support, about 1–2 times per month.
• Document: maintain clear and structured technical records.

What You Bring

• Minimum 10 years experience in systems engineering.
• Strong AWS experience (at scale).
• Expertise in Infrastructure as Code: Terraform, Ansible/Incebel.
• Strong Linux and Docker skills.
• Proficient in Bash scripting.
• Excellent understanding of networking.
• Balanced knowledge of on-premise and cloud infrastructure.
• MySQL database administration (performance, backup/restore).
• Basic knowledge of HSMs.
• Experience operating 24/7 highly available production systems.
• Leadership skills.
• Able to coach, delegate, and make decisions.
• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills.
• Excellent communication skills with technical and non-technical audiences.
• Mindset: proactive, organized, communicative, team player, and comfortable stretching beyond your comfort zone.