Amir Khawaja

About Amir Khawaja

I build engineering organizations that keep payment networks running.For three decades, I\'ve led teams across Discover, Visa, and Dell — from a consulting firm I founded at 19 to a reliability engineering organization spanning two major card networks. I\'ve scaled orgs from small teams to hundreds of engineers and navigated the harder direction too: restructuring an organization through an acquisition while maintaining operational excellence on systems that process billions of transactions.My career has been shaped by a few consistent beliefs. Engineering organizations exist to drive business outcomes, not just ship code. The leaders you develop matter more than the systems you build. And reliability isn\'t a cost center — it\'s a competitive asset that earns trust from every customer who taps a card.What I\'ve learned across these roles:Organizational design is a leadership discipline. I\'ve designed pod-based SRE models, built Centers of Excellence, and restructured teams across continents. The question I keep coming back to: are we organized to learn, or just organized to execute? The difference shows up in how fast you recover from what you didn\'t predict.Technology investment requires P&L thinking. At Dell, I built recommendation systems that generated $115M in combined annual revenue. At Visa, I delivered a LATAM technical roadmap projected at $100M. At Discover, I manage a large technology portfolio where every dollar has to connect to a reliability outcome or a business capability. The CFO doesn\'t care about your architecture — they care about what it enables.Building leaders is the work that compounds. I\'ve mentored engineers into Distinguished Engineer roles, developed Sr. Managers into Directors, and built talent pipelines across the US and UK. The best investment I\'ve made in any organization wasn\'t a platform or a tool. It was the people who stayed and built after I gave them room to lead.Outside of work, I\'m a third-degree black belt and certified Taekwondo instructor. I co-host Black Belts and Boardrooms, a podcast exploring leadership, entrepreneurship, and the discipline that connects them. The dojo taught me something corporate training never did: composure is a skill you build through repetition, not a trait you\'re born with. That principle shows up in how I lead through incidents, restructurings, and the ambiguity that comes with operating at scale in regulated environments.I write about engineering leadership, organizational design, and the business of building reliable systems. If that\'s useful to you, follow along.

Experience

1. Sr Director, Payments Site Reliability Engineering and Technology

   Discover

   Sep 2024 — Present · Chicago, IL, US

   As Senior Director at Discover Financial Services, I lead Site Reliability Engineering, orchestrating global teams across the US, UK, and India. Our mission: to ensure flawless customer interactions with our Payments platform, a cornerstone of Discover\'s digital infrastructure.My purview spans the Core Payments, Digital, Settlement, Disputes, Data, and Reporting platforms powering both the Discover Network and Diners Club International businesses within our Payments unit.Strategic Global Leadership- Orchestrate distributed teams focused on operational support, performance optimization, reliability enhancement, and deployment strategies- Foster a culture of innovation and collaboration, driving continuous improvement across our global operations.Operational Excellence- Oversee 24/7 operational coverage for mission-critical Payments platforms- Ensure seamless and secure payment experiences for millions of customers worldwide.Technological Innovation and Implementation- Provide platform and product engineering leadership for distributed systems leveraging diverse architecture patterns- Manage complex infrastructures across on-premise, multi-cloud, and hybrid environments.By harnessing our collective expertise and cultivating a culture of excellence, my teams and I continuously elevate the reliability and efficiency of Discover\'s global payment services. This steadfast commitment to innovation and operational superiority reinforces Discover Financial Services\' position as a leader in the financial technology sector.

Education

• University of Nevada-Las Vegas

  BA, Environmental Studies

  2003