Engineering Manager, Banking as a Service (BaaS)

Vantaca + HOAi • Raleigh, NC

1d • Remote

About The Position

Vantaca is seeking an Engineering Manager to lead and grow the Banking as a Service (BaaS) pod. This is a foundational role responsible for shaping how Vantaca connects to banking partners, defining API contracts, and ensuring compliant and reliable fund movement. The BaaS platform is Vantaca's programmatic banking layer, handling account structures, payment rails, and fund movement at scale. This role involves architecting a greenfield banking platform with modern tooling and a tight product loop with customers.

The Engineering Manager will own the BaaS layer, including outgoing ACH/transfers, incoming bank file ingestion, per-association account management, and real-time event processing. Key responsibilities include ensuring system compliance with NACHA rules and regulatory requirements, partnering with compliance and legal teams, and owning incident response for payment systems. The role also involves designing and evolving the event-driven architecture, defining event contracts, and ensuring reliability and fault tolerance. Additionally, the manager will own the design and versioning of BaaS-facing APIs, focusing on developer experience and backward compatibility. The technical onboarding of new banking partners and client onboarding for Vantaca's banking products are also key areas of ownership. The role includes leading a team of 2-5 engineers, managing hiring, onboarding, performance, and career development, and operating within Vantaca’s Spec-Driven Development (SDD) framework.

Requirements

• 3–5 years of people management experience leading backend engineering teams in a product company.
• Strong backend engineering background with hands-on experience in distributed systems, event-driven architectures, and API design.
• Experience shipping or operating systems that process financial transactions, ideally ACH, wire, or real-time payments.
• Familiarity with banking compliance concepts: NACHA rules, AML/BSA basics, Reg E, and how compliance requirements translate into engineering controls.
• Proven track record of defining and evolving external or internal APIs with a developer-first mindset.
• Comfort navigating bank partner relationships and technical certifications.

Nice To Haves

• Hands-on experience with BaaS platforms or sponsor bank integrations (e.g., Column, Increase, Unit, Sila, or similar).
• Background at a fintech-native company where payment reliability and compliance were first-class engineering concerns (e.g., Modern Treasury, Stripe, Increase, Meow, or comparable).
• Experience with event streaming infrastructure (Kafka, Azure Service Bus, or similar) in a financial context.
• Exposure to property management, HOA, or real estate tech — helpful but not required.
• Familiarity with AI-assisted development tooling and an interest in evolving SDLC practices.

Responsibilities

• Lead engineering for Vantaca’s BaaS layer, including outgoing ACH/transfers, incoming bank file ingestion, per-association account management, and real-time event processing.
• Ensure all systems meet NACHA operational rules, bank partner contractual obligations, and emerging regulatory requirements for embedded banking.
• Partner with compliance, legal, and BaaS providers to operationalize controls into the platform rather than bolting them on afterward.
• Own incident response and root cause analysis for any payment or banking system failures.
• Design and evolve the event-driven architecture underpinning BaaS, from bank file arrival through ledger reconciliation and downstream notification.
• Drive reliability, idempotency, and observability standards across async payment flows; build for fault tolerance in a domain where errors have financial consequences.
• Define event contracts and schema ownership practices that allow other Vantaca pods to consume banking events safely.
• Own the design and versioning of BaaS-facing APIs consumed by internal teams, partner integrations, and client-facing surfaces.
• Apply API-first thinking: define contracts before building, enforce backward compatibility, and ensure external-grade quality on APIs used by bank and property management clients.
• Collaborate with Platform and Integrations leads to establish consistent API governance standards across Vantaca engineering.
• Own the technical onboarding lifecycle for new banking partners — from integration spec through certification and production cutover.
• Build and maintain the client onboarding pipeline for associations joining Vantaca’s banking products, including account provisioning, KYC/KYB hooks, and initial funding flows.
• Work closely with Product and Customer Success to reduce time-to-live for new banking clients without sacrificing compliance.
• Lead a pod of 2–5 engineers; own hiring, onboarding, performance, and career development.
• Operate within Vantaca’s Spec-Driven Development (SDD) framework — driving specs before sprints and leveraging AI-assisted development practices across the team.
• Partner with your EM peers and report into senior engineering leadership; contribute to org-wide engineering culture and standards.

Benefits

• Medical, Dental, and Vision kick in day one
• Unlimited PTO (with a requirement for employees to take a minimum of one continuous week per year)
• 401K with Company Match
• Great parental leave benefits
• Ongoing industry and professional development trainings available to all employees

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Manager
• Education Level: No Education Listed