Payments Engineering Manager

Role Summary

The Engineer Manager is a hands‑on engineering leader responsible for delivery execution and Agile work management for a subset of the Product Development team, while actively contributing production code. This role blends deep technical contribution with ownership of day‑to‑day execution and team leadership, ensuring work is well‑scoped, visible, and delivered effectively while maintaining a high technical bar and strong team momentum.

Key Responsibilities

Delivery Execution & Agile Work Management

• Own day-to-day delivery execution for a small technical delivery team.
• Lead execution-focused Agile ceremonies including grooming, planning, standups, sprint execution, and retrospectives. Own backlog readiness, ticket quality, workflow, dependencies, and visibility.
• Ensure work is properly scoped, sequenced, and ready before entering development.
• Actively manage flow of work from ready through completion.
• Identify and remove delivery blockers, risks, and execution gaps.
• Serve as the first point of escalation for delivery issues related to roadmap execution.
• Provide clear and concise delivery status and execution progress updates to leadership.

Hands-On Technical Leadership

• Contribute directly to the codebase by implementing roadmap features end-to-end using React and Java.
• Lead by example through code reviews, pairing, and hands-on technical mentorship.
• Step into complex or ambiguous technical areas to unblock delivery.
• Ensure delivered work is production-ready, testable, maintainable, and aligned with engineering standards.
• Balance feature delivery with long-term technical health and quality.

People Leadership (Tightly Scoped)

• Manage a small number of direct reports while remaining a hands‑on technical leader.
• Conduct regular 1:1s focused on execution, growth, and support.
• Provide day-to-day technical leadership and mentorship.
• Support onboarding and development of engineers on the team.
• Maintain focus on hands-on contribution while supporting team effectiveness.
• Ability to complete the key responsibilities with or without accommodation.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, Information Technology, a related field, or 5+ years of experience in lieu of a bachelor's degree.
• 3+ years of experience building and operating payment platforms, including payment gateways and processor integrations.
• 5+ years of senior-level full-stack engineering experience delivering production software.
• 3+ years of Java backend development experience.
• 2+ years of React frontend development experience.
• 3+ years leading delivery execution and Agile work management. Proven ability to identify risks, remove blockers, and drive work to completion.
• 5+ years of demonstrated leadership of engineering teams, with the ability to grow and steady the team; supporting engineers through complex, high stakes work by providing clarity, structure, and calm guidance on large, challenging initiatives.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with cloud-native systems and modern CI/CD practices.
• Experience improving team workflows, Agile practices, or delivery systems.
• Experience mentoring or leading engineers while remaining hands-on.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to provide clear, actionable execution updates.

Important Screening Clarifier

This is a hands-on engineering leadership role. It is not a project manager or Scrum Master-only position. Candidates must be senior engineers who actively contribute to a Java and React codebase while leading delivery execution.