Distinguished Engineer - Commerce
Who we are
Since 1843, The Economist Group has championed independence, excellence and openness, helping people understand and tackle the critical challenges shaping the world. Today, we are building on that legacy as a global media and information-services company powered by digital innovation, analytical rigour and evidence-based insight.
Across our three businesses -The Economist, Economist Enterprise and Economist Education - we deliver trusted analysis and insights to individuals and organisations in more than 170 countries. United by a shared purpose to drive progress, we empower decision-makers to make sense of change and chart a course through an increasingly complex world.
As a colleague, you will be part of a culture that values ideas, encourages ownership and holds itself to high standards. We invest in people who are curious, thoughtful and adaptable, whether they are launching new products, reporting on global events or harnessing emerging technologies such as AI to improve how we work. Here, fresh thinking is taken seriously, ambition is matched by integrity, and great work is recognised. Working across disciplines, geographies and perspectives, we are united by a commitment to innovation, excellence and creating meaningful impact.
Want to discover more about life at The Economist Group? Follow @EconomistCareers on Instagram to discover the people, stories and opportunities that make TEG unique.
The role
The Economist is consolidating Product, Engineering, Delivery, Design and Quality into a single Technology organisation built around durable, cross-functional teams aligned to coherent product and platform domains. Alongside the accountable leaders who run each domain, a small number of Distinguished Engineers hold technical authority across them: they set architectural direction, own the hardest technical problems and raise the engineering bar, without line-management responsibility.
Commerce is the domain through which every subscription is sold, billed, paid for, renewed and fulfilled. It underpins revenue from 1.2 million subscribers across multiple currencies, regions, channels and products, digital and print. Its systems — subscription and billing management, payments, pricing and offers, entitlements, and the integrations to CRM, finance and fulfilment — are among the most business-critical and least forgiving in the company: defects cost money directly and are visible to customers and auditors.
The Distinguished Engineer, Commerce role is created to give that domain a single senior technical authority: someone who owns the target architecture for commerce end to end, makes the consequential technical decisions, and is the most credible engineer in the room on subscription, billing and payments at scale. The role sits at the same level as Head of Product & Engineering and works as the technical counterpart to the domain leaders who build on commerce.
Responsibilities
The role holds technical authority over the commerce platform and its integrations across the Technology organisation:
- Subscription and billing: The subscription lifecycle — acquisition, trials, upgrades, downgrades, renewals, cancellations and win-back — and the billing, invoicing and collections built on Zuora and adjacent services.
- Payments: Global payment orchestration across providers, methods and currencies; tokenisation, authorisation optimisation, retries and dunning, fraud controls, chargebacks and PCI DSS scope.
- Pricing, offers and checkout: The pricing and promotion engine, product catalogue, tax calculation, and the APIs that power checkout and paywall journeys across web, apps and partner channels.
- Entitlements and integrations: The link between commercial state and access: entitlements, identity integration, and the flows into CRM, finance and revenue recognition, data, and print fulfilment.
- Reliability, security and cost: The availability, correctness, observability, auditability and cost to serve of everything that moves money or grants access.
The role works across every team that builds on or changes commerce, with Heads of Product & Engineering, Engineering Managers, Technical Leads, Architecture, Security, Data, Finance and B2C Commercial as partners.
Accountabilities
- Set the commerce technical strategy: Define and maintain the target architecture for subscription, billing, payments and entitlements, and a sequenced, costed path from today’s estate to it, aligned to commercial strategy and agreed with domain leaders.
- Own the hardest technical decisions: Make or arbitrate the high-consequence calls — build, buy or replace; platform and vendor selection; migration strategy; data models and integration patterns — and record them so they can be understood and challenged.
- Lead from the code: Stay hands-on: design, prototype, write and review code on the critical paths, and lead directly on the most complex initiatives, such as billing-platform migrations, payment-provider changes or new market launches.
- Guarantee correctness and resilience: Set the standards for reliability, idempotency, reconciliation, observability and incident response on systems that move money, and lead the technical response and root-cause analysis for major commerce incidents.
- Hold the line on security and compliance: Own the technical posture on PCI DSS, strong customer authentication, data protection and financial controls, working with Security, Legal and Finance.
- Raise the engineering bar: Mentor and develop Technical Leads and Staff and Principal Engineers; shape engineering standards, review practice and hiring bars; and be a visible reason strong engineers join and stay.
- Connect technology to commercial outcomes: Translate architecture into business terms — revenue at risk, payment acceptance, involuntary churn, time to launch a price or market, cost to serve — and build the technical case for investment.
- Lead strategic technical partnerships: Hold the technical relationship with strategic vendors and partners, including Zuora, payment providers and Salesforce, and influence their roadmaps where it matters to us.
Who you are
- Commerce engineering at scale: Substantial experience in engineering, a significant part of it as a senior technical authority — designing and running subscription, billing and payment systems for a high-volume, global, multi-currency consumer business. Media, digital subscription or e-commerce context strongly preferred.
- Enterprise subscription and billing platforms: Deep, hands-on experience with an enterprise subscription and billing platform, including its data model, integration patterns, limits and migration.
- Payments depth: Expert understanding of the payments ecosystem: payment service providers and acquirers, orchestration, local and alternative payment methods, authorisation optimisation, dunning and retries, fraud, chargebacks, PCI DSS and SCA/3DS.
- Architecture of financially critical systems: A track record of designing distributed, event-driven and API-based systems where correctness matters: idempotency, consistency, reconciliation, audit trails and graceful failure. Fluent in cloud-native platforms and modern back-end stacks.
- Leading large-scale change without line authority: Evidence of setting direction across multiple teams and leading complex, multi-year migrations or re-platforming through influence, written argument and technical credibility.
- Hands-on credibility: Still writes and reviews production code, and can go deep on design, debugging and performance alongside senior engineers.
- Commercial and financial fluency: Understands how subscription businesses make money — pricing, lifetime value, churn, revenue recognition, tax — and can build and defend investment cases with commercial and finance leaders.
- Communication: Exceptional written and verbal communication; able to make trade-offs plain to engineers, executives and auditors alike.
Desirable
- Subscription systems: Experience in large-scale payment and subscription systems.
- Physical fulfilment: Experience of subscription platforms that drive print or other physical fulfilment processes.
- B2B and corporate subscriptions: Group licensing, invoiced billing, seat management and site licences.
- Pricing and checkout experimentation: Supporting a high-cadence programme of pricing, offer and checkout tests safely in production.
- Entitlements and identity: Designing entitlement services and their integration with identity and access across web, apps and partners.
- AI-enabled ways of working: Using AI tooling to improve engineering productivity and quality, or commerce operations such as payment recovery and fraud detection.
- Industry standing: Public contributions — talks, writing, open source or standards work — in commerce or payments engineering.
Further attributes
- Thinks in systems and in money: understands that every architectural choice in commerce shows up in revenue, cost or risk.
- Direct and evidence-led: makes the trade-off explicit, states the assumption, measures the result.
- Leads through influence rather than hierarchy; is sought out by teams rather than imposed on them.
- Credible with senior engineers and with commercial and finance leaders in the same week.
- Builds and simplifies: prefers fewer, better systems and removes complexity rather than adding it.
- Raises the standard of the people around them and multiplies the impact of every team they touch.
#LI-Hybrid
Working Arrangements
The majority of our roles operate on a hybrid working pattern, with 3+ days office attendance required.
AI usage for your application
We are an innovative organisation that encourages the use of technology. We recognise that candidates may utilise AI tools to support with their job application process. However, it is essential that all information you provide truthfully and accurately reflects your own experience, skills, and qualifications.
What we offer
Our benefits package is designed to support your wellbeing, growth, and work-life balance. It includes a highly competitive pension or 401(k) plan, private health insurance, and 24/7 access to counselling and wellbeing resources through our Employee Assistance Program.
We also offer a range of lifestyle benefits, including our Work From Anywhere program, which allows you to work from any location where you have the legal right to do so for up to 25 days per year. In addition, we provide generous annual and parental leave, as well as dedicated days off for volunteering and even for moving home.
You will also be given free access to all The Economist content, including an online subscription, our range of apps, podcasts and more.
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