Senior Engineering Manager (Core Services)

Who is Recruiting from Scratch: 

 

Recruiting from Scratch is a premier talent firm that focuses on placing the best product managers, software, and hardware talent at innovative companies. Our team is 100% remote and we work with teams across the United States to help them hire.

Senior Engineering Manager (Core Services)

Location

Remote, US

Fully remote within the US. Relocation support available for candidates who want to be near an office.

Compensation

$200,000 – $260,000 Base + Competitive Equity

Visa

US Citizens / Green Card Holders Only — No Visa Sponsorship or Transfers

Company Stage of Funding

Growth Stage / Venture-Backed — Founded 2017

Office Type

Remote — Digital-First

Travel

Once per quarter for company or department offsites

Company Description

We are a rapidly growing fintech and cybersecurity company building innovative identity verification and risk solutions that help institutions and individuals transact with confidence.

Our platform provides real-time identity and risk decisioning through APIs and software systems used at significant scale, with hundreds of millions of identities verified across financial services and other markets.

The company is backed by leading technology and fintech investors and has raised significant venture funding while building a highly technical organization focused on security, reliability, data, and scalable software infrastructure.

The engineering organization operates as a digital-first team across the US and India. This role sits within the core engineering organization and owns the backend services, APIs, and platform foundation that power critical products and enable product teams to move quickly with confidence.

This is an opportunity for a strong technical engineering leader who combines deep backend engineering expertise with people management, technical architecture, and a strong focus on reliability and operational excellence.

What You Will Do

• Lead Backend & Platform Engineering: Lead and grow a team of backend/platform engineers responsible for systems powering critical applications and core products.
• Drive execution across planning, prioritization, technical strategy, and delivery while maintaining a strong focus on reliability and scalability.
• Own Technical Direction: Guide the architecture and long-term evolution of backend services, APIs, and core platform systems.
• Ensure backend systems are secure, performant, maintainable, and designed to support continued growth.
• Partner closely with product and front-end engineering teams to translate product requirements into robust backend architectures and services.
• Productionize Data Science: Collaborate with data science teams to productionize machine learning models and integrate decisioning systems into APIs and product workflows.
• Work closely with infrastructure engineering to improve system reliability, observability, operational maturity, and developer experience.
• Contribute directly to architectural decisions, technical design reviews, and complex systems problem-solving.
• Maintain high standards for code quality, testing, security, and operational excellence.
• Support incident response and ensure critical systems consistently meet SLA expectations.
• Build the Team: Hire, mentor, coach, and develop engineers while maintaining a high technical and hiring bar.
• Foster a culture of ownership, accountability, technical excellence, and continuous improvement.
• Stay close to technical work by contributing to code, design, debugging, and technical problem-solving when needed.
• Identify technical bottlenecks and continuously improve engineering processes, architecture, and developer productivity.

Ideal Candidate Background

Experience Requirements

• 8+ years of software engineering experience, with meaningful experience in backend/platform engineering.
• 3+ years of engineering management or people leadership experience.
• Strong track record of building and operating production backend systems.
• Experience leading small to mid-sized engineering teams.
• Demonstrated ability to balance technical leadership with people management.
• Experience owning technical roadmaps, architecture, and execution.
• Experience working in fast-moving, high-growth technology environments.
• Strong background partnering with product, infrastructure, data science, and frontend engineering teams.
• Experience hiring, mentoring, and developing high-performing engineers.

Technical Requirements

• Strong backend software engineering fundamentals.
• Strong experience with Golang and/or Python.
• Experience designing and operating API-driven systems.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems and backend architecture.
• Experience with PostgreSQL or comparable relational databases.
• Experience with cloud infrastructure, particularly AWS.
• Experience with Docker and containerized services.
• Experience building scalable and maintainable production services.
• Strong understanding of software development practices, testing, code quality, and system design.

Platform & Infrastructure Requirements

• Experience building or managing backend/platform engineering teams.
• Strong understanding of APIs, service architecture, and platform design.
• Experience with AWS services such as Lambda, Cognito, and other standard cloud services.
• Experience with infrastructure, developer tooling, or platform reliability.
• Familiarity with observability, monitoring, logging, and operational tooling.
• Experience with search or data infrastructure such as OpenSearch is preferred.
• Strong understanding of scalability, performance, and maintainability.
• Experience partnering closely with infrastructure/platform teams.

Data, Security & Reliability Requirements

• Experience building secure backend services and APIs.
• Strong understanding of authentication, authorization, and data security.
• Experience operating systems with high reliability and availability requirements.
• Experience supporting production incidents and maintaining SLA expectations.
• Strong understanding of monitoring, observability, logging, and alerting.
• Experience working with data science teams to productionize models or decisioning systems.
• Strong attention to correctness, reliability, and operational excellence.
• Experience in fintech, cybersecurity, financial services, identity, risk, or other high-trust environments is highly preferred.

Soft Skills

• Strong technical leadership and judgment.
• Excellent people management and coaching skills.
• High ownership and accountability.
• Strong communication and cross-functional collaboration.
• Comfortable staying close to technical details while leading a team.
• Able to make thoughtful architectural decisions without becoming overly prescriptive.
• Strong product and business judgment.
• Comfortable operating in a fast-moving and evolving environment.
• Strong hiring instincts and ability to maintain a high talent bar.
• Effective at resolving ambiguity and unblocking complex engineering challenges.
• Able to balance short-term execution with long-term technical strategy.
• Strong interest in developing engineers and building high-performing teams.

Compensation & Benefits

• $200K – $260K base salary.
• Competitive equity.
• Employer-paid group health insurance for employees and dependents.
• 401(k) plan with employer match.
• Flexible paid time off.
• Home office stipend.
• Regular company-wide in-person events and team offsites.
• Fully remote US work environment.
• Relocation support available for candidates who want to be near a company office.

Why Join

• Lead a core backend/platform engineering team responsible for systems powering critical products.
• Combine hands-on technical leadership with meaningful people management.
• Influence the architecture and long-term technical direction of a rapidly growing platform.
• Work at the intersection of backend engineering, APIs, infrastructure, data science, security, and fintech.
• Help productionize sophisticated data science and decisioning systems.
• Build and develop a high-performing engineering organization.
• Work on systems operating at significant real-world scale with strong reliability and security requirements.
• Join a well-funded, high-growth company solving important problems in identity and financial risk.
• Work remotely with a highly collaborative engineering organization distributed across the US and India.