Senior Engineering Manager (Core Services)

Recruiting From Scratch • San Francisco, CA

1d • Remote

About The Position

Recruiting from Scratch is seeking a Senior Engineering Manager (Core Services) for a rapidly growing fintech and cybersecurity company. This fully remote role within the US focuses on leading backend and platform engineering teams responsible for critical systems, APIs, and platform foundations. The ideal candidate will combine deep backend engineering expertise with people management, technical architecture, and a strong focus on reliability and operational excellence. The company is venture-backed and operates as a digital-first team across the US and India, building innovative identity verification and risk solutions.

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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Strong understanding of scalability, performance, and maintainability.
• Experience partnering closely with infrastructure/platform teams.
• 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.
• 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.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with search or data infrastructure such as OpenSearch is preferred.
• Experience in fintech, cybersecurity, financial services, identity, risk, or other high-trust environments is highly preferred.

Responsibilities

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

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.

What This Job Offers

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