Engineering Manager - Backend

We are looking for an Engineering Manager - Backend to lead our backend engineering team and play a key role in shaping the technology powering Equall's lending platform. This role is ideal for an experienced backend engineer who has evolved into a people leader, enjoys solving complex engineering problems, and can balance technology, execution, and team development.

The core responsibilities for the job include the following:

Engineering and Technical Leadership:

• Lead the backend engineering team responsible for building and scaling Equall's core technology platform.
• Own the design and development of scalable, secure, and highly available backend systems.
• Drive technical architecture, system design, and engineering best practices across backend services.
• Be hands-on enough to review architecture, code, and technical decisions, and guide engineers on complex problems.
• Establish standards around code quality, testing, observability, performance, security, and reliability.
• Identify and address technical debt while ensuring the platform remains scalable as the business grows.
• Work closely with Product, Risk, Credit, Operations, and other stakeholders to translate business requirements into robust technical solutions.
• Participate in critical technical discussions and help make pragmatic build-vs-buy and architectural decisions.

People Management and Team Leadership:

• Manage, mentor, and grow a team of backend engineers.
• Set clear goals and expectations for team members and continuously coach them towards achieving those goals.
• Conduct regular 1:1s, provide constructive feedback, and support individual career development.
• Own and actively participate in performance reviews, appraisals, promotions, and career progression for team members.
• Identify high-potential engineers and help create opportunities for them to take on larger responsibilities.
• Build a culture of ownership, accountability, engineering excellence, and continuous learning.
• Help with hiring, interviewing, and building a strong backend engineering team.

Delivery and Execution:

• Own engineering delivery for backend initiatives, from planning through production.
• Work with product and engineering leadership to define priorities, timelines, and milestones.
• Ensure predictable delivery without compromising engineering quality.
• Proactively identify risks, dependencies, and bottlenecks and drive them to resolution.
• Establish effective development processes while keeping the team agile and execution-focused.

Requirements:

• 8-12 years of software engineering experience, with strong backend development experience.
• Prior experience managing and mentoring engineers, with at least 1+ year of formal people-management experience.
• Strong hands-on experience with Java and Spring Boot.
• Strong understanding of REST APIs, microservices, and distributed systems.
• Good understanding of databases, data modelling, caching, messaging, and asynchronous systems.
• Experience designing and building scalable, high-performance backend systems.
• Strong understanding of software engineering fundamentals, design patterns, and clean architecture.
• Experience with cloud platforms and modern DevOps practices is a plus.
• Experience working in a fast-paced product/startup environment is highly desirable.
• Strong problem-solving and system-design skills.
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to work effectively across engineering, product, and business teams.