The Role
Leads and develops a distributed engineering team responsible for payment and financial infrastructure. The role drives technical excellence, system reliability, security, observability, roadmap planning, hiring, operational practices, and cross-functional delivery across multiple markets. It requires strong backend and distributed-systems expertise, cloud infrastructure experience, and the ability to balance technical leadership with people management.
Summary Generated by Built In
About PayJoy
PayJoy, a Public Benefit Corporation, is a mission-first credit provider dedicated to helping under-served customers in emerging markets to achieve financial stability and success. Our patented technology for secured credit provides an on-ramp for new customers to enter the credit system. Through PayJoy’s point-of-sale financing and card offerings, customers gain access to a modern quality of life. PayJoy’s credit also allows our customers to seize opportunities as micro-entrepreneurs, and acts as insurance for tough times. Through our cutting-edge machine learning, data science, and anti-fraud AI, we have served over 18 million customers as of 2025 while achieving solid profitability for sustainable growth.
This role
PayJoy's Spend team builds the infrastructure that enables customers to use their credit, from payment and disbursement methods to payment processor integrations and the full credit card lifecycle.
As a Senior Engineering Manager, Spend, you will lead and grow a distributed team of engineers, driving technical excellence, operational reliability, and predictable delivery. You will work closely with Product, Risk, Compliance, Finance, and other Engineering teams to build and scale reliable, secure, and cost-efficient financial infrastructure across multiple markets.
This role is ideal for an experienced engineering leader who combines strong technical judgment with a people-first management approach. You will empower engineers to own technical decisions, develop high-performing teams, and establish effective engineering practices that support PayJoy's continued growth.
What You'll Do
- Lead and develop a high-performing engineering team: Coach and mentor engineers, support career development, conduct performance reviews, and build a culture of accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
- Build and scale the team: Partner with Talent Acquisition to recruit, assess, and retain exceptional engineering talent through structured interviews and effective hiring practices.
- Drive technical excellence: Establish and maintain high standards for software architecture, code quality, testing, security, observability, and engineering practices across payment integrations and financial infrastructure.
- Own operational reliability: Ensure services are highly available and resilient by driving effective incident management, healthy on-call practices, post-incident reviews, and continuous reliability improvements.
- Shape the engineering roadmap: Partner with Product and engineering leadership to define priorities, plan projects, establish OKRs, and balance feature delivery with technical debt, infrastructure investments, and system health.
- Enable financial infrastructure at scale: Work with Risk, Compliance, Finance, payment processors, and card issuers to deliver secure, compliant, and cost-efficient solutions across markets.
- Improve engineering effectiveness: Evaluate team processes, remove technical and organizational blockers, and introduce practices that improve delivery speed, quality, and predictability.
- Provide technical leadership: Guide architectural discussions, review technical proposals, and help the team navigate complex engineering trade-offs while fostering autonomy and ownership.
What We're Looking For
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
- 12+ years of experience in software engineering, infrastructure, platform engineering, or a related technical field.
- 4+ years of engineering management experience, leading and developing high-performing engineering teams.
- Proven experience building, operating, and scaling highly available, reliable, and secure systems.
- Strong backend engineering experience, including SQL and database-driven applications.
- Experience with distributed systems, software architecture, networking, databases, security, observability, and production operations.
- Strong understanding of DevOps practices, CI/CD, automated testing, and infrastructure reliability.
- Experience with cloud infrastructure, preferably AWS, and technologies such as Docker, Kubernetes, and YAML-based configuration.
- Ability to balance technical depth with people leadership, strategic planning, and operational execution.
- Demonstrated ability to make sound technical decisions, communicate trade-offs, and influence stakeholders across engineering and business teams.
- Experience implementing and improving agile development practices.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills (Spanish And English)
Nice to Have
- Experience in fintech, banking, payments, or other financial services.
- Familiarity with payment processors, payment disbursements, merchant integrations, financial reconciliation, or banking partnerships.
- Experience working with credit cards and their associated infrastructure, including issuance, fulfillment, and lifecycle management.
- Experience with PHP.
- Familiarity with Django or Kotlin.
Benefits
- 100% Company-funded Health for employees and immediate family members
- Life Insurance
- Indefinite-term contract
- 20 days of vacations, unlimited sick leave
- $2,000 USD annual Co-working Travel perk
- $2,000 USD annual Professional Development perk
- Phone finance, headphone benefit, home office equipment allowance and wellness perks
- Catered lunches
PayJoy is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer and we welcome and encourage people of all backgrounds. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.
PayJoy Principles
Finance for the next billion * Ownership * Break Through Walls * Live Communication * Transparency & Directness * Focus on Scale * Work-Life Balance * Embrace Diversity * Speed * Active Listening
Skills Required
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience
- 12+ years of experience in software engineering, infrastructure, platform engineering, or a related technical field
- 4+ years of engineering management experience leading and developing high-performing engineering teams
- Experience building, operating, and scaling highly available, reliable, and secure systems
- Strong backend engineering experience, including SQL and database-driven applications
- Experience with distributed systems, software architecture, networking, databases, security, observability, and production operations
- Strong understanding of DevOps practices, CI/CD, automated testing, and infrastructure reliability
- Experience with cloud infrastructure, preferably AWS, and technologies such as Docker, Kubernetes, and YAML-based configuration
- Ability to balance technical depth with people leadership, strategic planning, and operational execution
- Demonstrated ability to make sound technical decisions, communicate trade-offs, and influence engineering and business stakeholders
- Experience implementing and improving agile development practices
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills in Spanish and English
- Experience in fintech, banking, payments, or other financial services
- Familiarity with payment processors, payment disbursements, merchant integrations, financial reconciliation, or banking partnerships
- Experience with credit cards and related infrastructure, including issuance, fulfillment, and lifecycle management
- Experience with PHP
- Familiarity with Django or Kotlin
PayJoy Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about PayJoy and has not been reviewed or approved by PayJoy.
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Fair & Transparent Compensation — Pay is considered market‑aligned for senior U.S. technical roles, and public salary bands help candidates benchmark and align expectations. Feedback suggests this transparency supports confidence that offers are competitive for role and location.
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Healthcare Strength — Company‑paid basic medical, dental, vision, life, and disability coverage is emphasized as a standout element versus many startups. Feedback suggests this reduces out‑of‑pocket burden and strengthens the core benefits foundation.
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Parental & Family Support — Paid parental leave and flexible hours are highlighted alongside dedicated time off. Feedback suggests these family‑oriented policies enhance the perceived completeness of the package.
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The Company
What We Do
PayJoy's mission is to deliver access to credit to the next billion people in emerging markets worldwide. Our unique mobile security technology gives customers the ability to afford their first smartphone on credit, using the phone itself as collateral, and then provides further access to credit to help weather life's unexpected financial surprises and climb the ladder of economic well-being. Founded in 2015, today PayJoy has reached millions of customers in a dozen countries around the globe, including Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, India, Kenya, and South Africa, and is on a strong growth path with support from major industry partners to bring credit to the next billion emerging consumers.
