Engineering Manager, Infrastructure

Kikoff•San Francisco, CA

20h

About The Position

Kikoff's infrastructure team builds the systems that let engineering move quickly without giving up reliability, security, or cost discipline. The team owns five connected areas: Observability, Developer Productivity, Compute Infrastructure, Networking and Storage, and Data Infrastructure. As Engineering Manager, you will lead and grow this team, set technical direction, and run infrastructure as a product for Kikoff engineers. You will decide where the team should invest, help engineers turn ambiguous problems into durable systems, and make sure the work improves how the company builds and operates. This is a player-coach role. You will stay close to the code, the architecture, the incidents, and the people. You should be comfortable reviewing code and designs, making architecture calls, and contributing directly when the team needs you. Strong ICs should respect your technical judgment because you understand the work, not because you report on it. AI is increasing the amount of code and change moving through our systems. You will help build a platform that can absorb that growth without creating more incidents, unsustainable cost, or a team that depends on heroics.

Requirements

8+ years of engineering experience and 2+ years managing engineers, or an equivalent record of technical leadership and people development.
A strong infrastructure foundation. You can review code and designs, make architecture decisions, and contribute directly when needed.
Experience operating consequential production systems, responding to incidents, and improving what remained after the immediate problem was solved.
A track record of hiring, coaching, and developing strong engineers. You know what good looks like and can help people get there.
Experience setting technical direction and turning ambiguous infrastructure problems into a roadmap the team can execute.
Comfort making decisions with incomplete information and changing course when the evidence changes.
Clear, direct communication with engineers, leadership, and cross-functional partners.

Nice To Haves

Depth in one or more of observability, cloud compute, networking, storage, data infrastructure, developer tooling, or security.
Experience running internal platforms as a product in fintech or another regulated environment, including measuring adoption and customer outcomes through a period of rapid growth.

Responsibilities

Lead, coach, and develop experienced infrastructure engineers across five connected areas.
Hire engineers who can work across domains, take ownership of production outcomes, and earn the trust of their peers.
Stay close enough to the work to coach from evidence.
Review code and designs, challenge weak decisions, make architecture calls, and unblock the team directly when needed.
Give each area clear ownership, backup coverage, growth paths, and a sustainable on-call model.
Support the technical direction across observability, developer productivity, compute, networking, storage, and data infrastructure.
Uphold high engineering standards for reliability, testing, safe deployments, security, and maintainability.
Make clear tradeoffs between speed, reliability, cost, and long-term operating complexity.
Lead through incidents and unfamiliar failure modes, then make sure the system is better after service is restored.
Understand what Kikoff engineers need and turn that into a focused roadmap with clear priorities.
Build paved paths and self-service systems that teams choose because they are faster and safer than one-off solutions.
Unblock teams through the fastest responsible path, then turn recurring friction into automation or a durable platform capability.
Measure outcomes for internal customers, including delivery speed, reliability, cost, toil, and on-call load.
Make sure critical services have an owner, backup, SLO, actionable alerts, dashboard, runbook, capacity expectations, and a tested recovery path.
Use service health, incidents, delivery data, cost, and customer feedback to decide what the team works on next.
Close incident actions and recurring operational gaps instead of allowing them to become permanent background work.
Build an organization that does not depend on constant interrupts, heroics, or one person's memory to stay healthy.

Benefits

record revenue growth in 2025
unicorn valuation
empower everyone to achieve financial security
build credit, access liquidity, and save money
build something meaningful
help millions of people move forward financially
working with serial entrepreneurs who have built strong consumer brands and innovative products
extreme ownership
clear communication
strong sense of craftsmanship
desire to create lasting work and work relationships
build an exciting business AND have real-life real-customer impact
player-coach role
stay close to the code, the architecture, the incidents, and the people
comfortable reviewing code and designs
making architecture calls
contributing directly when the team needs you
respect your technical judgment
build a platform that can absorb that growth without creating more incidents, unsustainable cost, or a team that depends on heroics
lead, coach, and develop experienced infrastructure engineers
hire engineers who can work across domains
take ownership of production outcomes
earn the trust of their peers
stay close enough to the work to coach from evidence
challenge weak decisions
unblock the team directly when needed
give each area clear ownership, backup coverage, growth paths, and a sustainable on-call model
support the technical direction
uphold high engineering standards for reliability, testing, safe deployments, security, and maintainability
make clear tradeoffs between speed, reliability, cost, and long-term operating complexity
lead through incidents and unfamiliar failure modes
make sure the system is better after service is restored
understand what Kikoff engineers need
turn that into a focused roadmap with clear priorities
build paved paths and self-service systems that teams choose because they are faster and safer than one-off solutions
unblock teams through the fastest responsible path
turn recurring friction into automation or a durable platform capability
measure outcomes for internal customers, including delivery speed, reliability, cost, toil, and on-call load
make sure critical services have an owner, backup, SLO, actionable alerts, dashboard, runbook, capacity expectations, and a tested recovery path
use service health, incidents, delivery data, cost, and customer feedback to decide what the team works on next
close incident actions and recurring operational gaps instead of allowing them to become permanent background work
build an organization that does not depend on constant interrupts, heroics, or one person's memory to stay healthy
8+ years of engineering experience
2+ years managing engineers
equivalent record of technical leadership and people development
strong infrastructure foundation
experience operating consequential production systems
responding to incidents
improving what remained after the immediate problem was solved
track record of hiring, coaching, and developing strong engineers
experience setting technical direction
turning ambiguous infrastructure problems into a roadmap the team can execute
comfort making decisions with incomplete information
changing course when the evidence changes
clear, direct communication with engineers, leadership, and cross-functional partners
depth in one or more of observability, cloud compute, networking, storage, data infrastructure, developer tooling, or security
experience running internal platforms as a product in fintech or another regulated environment
measuring adoption and customer outcomes through a period of rapid growth
Scrappy. We move quickly and build what we need.
We do not cut corners when they matter, and we do not over-engineer when they do not.
Risk-oriented. We make tradeoffs deliberately.
A mature team knows the difference between a risk worth taking and one that is not.
Data-obsessed. We look at the data, understand the mechanics behind it, and use that evidence to make better decisions.
Humble. We know the company has benefited from timing, circumstance, and the right people showing up.
We are grateful, and we do not take it for granted.
Base Range $307,000 - $352,000 USD
Equal Employment Opportunity Statement
Kikoff Inc. is an equal opportunity employer.
We are committed to complying with all federal, state, and local laws providing equal employment opportunities and considers qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy, sex, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation, citizenship, or any other legally protected class.