Head of Engineering

Our client is a venture-backed fintech startup, is hiring a hands-on Head of Engineering to join the team full-time in New York. The successful candidate will take full ownership of the company's technical direction, leading decisions across architecture, backend engineering, data, infrastructure, integrations and security, as well as building and shipping the company's most critical systems while defining the engineering standards that will support the team's growth.

Responsibilities

• Design and own a multi-tenant authorization architecture that controls access to sensitive information at the system level.

• Develop and maintain credentialed integrations, beginning with the IRS and expanding to credit bureaus, government systems, courts and financial institutions.

• Manage complex third-party API workflows, including credential lifecycles, data reconciliation, asynchronous processing, webhook failures, retries and exception handling.

• Establish and maintain a robust security and privacy framework covering PII encryption, access controls, secrets management, audit logging, monitoring and incident response.

• Build systems that protect data provenance, accuracy, and defensibility, ensuring every material value can be traced to its original source.

• Lead critical architectural decisions across backend systems, data infrastructure, application security, reliability and scalability.

• Write and ship production code, particularly for the company's most sensitive and technically complex systems.

• Define and uphold engineering standards across code quality, testing, documentation, observability, ownership and operational readiness.

• Recruit, assess, mentor and lead the engineers who will help build and scale the platform.

Skillset

• Extensive experience designing, building and operating production systems that manage regulated, confidential or highly sensitive information.

• A hands-on approach, with the ability and willingness to write code and personally deliver critical production systems.

• Strong technical expertise across backend engineering, systems architecture, data engineering, infrastructure and security.

• Proven experience delivering software where errors carry significant financial, legal, regulatory or operational consequences.

• The ability to design secure, reliable, traceable and defensible systems, and clearly explain the architectural decisions behind them.

• Experience owning complex integrations involving third-party APIs, credential chains, webhooks, asynchronous workflows, reconciliation processes and inconsistent data.

• Strong knowledge of multi-tenant authorization, granular permission models, encryption, audit trails, monitoring and incident-response procedures.

• Experience taking final responsibility for critical technical decisions and owning the resulting outcomes.

• The ability to balance rapid execution with the accuracy and rigor required when handling sensitive financial and personal information.

• Previous experience as a Head of Engineering, founding engineer, technical founder, or senior engineering leader within an early-stage company, ideally within fintech, legal or another regulated sector.

Benefits

• Salary: $225k - $275k DOE.

• Meaningful equity.

• Medical, Dental and Vision insurance.