ABOUT ASTRA Astra is a high-impact engineering team building mission-critical financial infrastructure. Our fintech platform powers payment processing, fraud detection, and financial compliance for businesses handling 100M+ in weekly transaction volume. We maintain 99.9%+ uptime, process complex cross-border payments, and coordinate with multiple third-party financial services while meeting strict regulatory requirements. THE ROLE We're looking for an Engineering Manager to contribute to leading and growing our engineering team while remaining deeply hands-on in the architecture and development of complex financial systems that process millions of dollars daily. This is a player-coach role — you'll drive technical direction and mentor your team while continuing to contribute meaningfully as an engineer yourself. You'll be central to designing cross-domain solutions that coordinate payments, fraud detection, compliance, and user management across our distributed microservices architecture. This role requires deep systems thinking, technical leadership, and the proven ability to both build sophisticated systems and build the engineers who build them. WHAT YOU'LL DO * Contribute to the codebase as a technical force multiplier: filling gaps, improving quality, and modeling engineering standards. * Lead and Develop Your Team: Manage a team of backend engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence, ownership, and continuous growth. Conduct regular 1:1s, provide mentorship, and support career development across all levels of the team. * Architect Critical Financial Systems: Design and implement payment processing, fraud detection, and compliance systems that handle millions of dollars daily with strict regulatory requirements — and guide your team in doing the same. * Drive Technical Decisions: Own architecture decisions that impact the entire platform, establishing best practices and engineering standards as the organization scales. * Stay Hands-On: Contribute directly to complex engineering work — this is not a purely managerial role. You'll write code, participate in design reviews, and remain an active technical voice on the team. * Lead Cross-Domain Solutions: Coordinate complex interactions between payments, fraud detection, user management, and compliance systems across a distributed microservices architecture. * Partner Across the Organization: Collaborate closely with product, compliance, and other engineering teams to design systems that meet both business and regulatory requirements. * Build Engineering Culture: Establish coding standards, design patterns, and engineering practices that will define the team's culture from the ground up. * Manage Delivery: Balance technical quality with business velocity — plan engineering work, remove blockers, and ensure the team ships reliably. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR REQUIRED EXPERIENCE * 7+ years of software engineering experience building complex, production systems * 2+ years of experience leading an engineering team, including performance management and hiring * Demonstrated experience as a player-coach — comfortable moving between technical execution and team leadership * Proven track record of solving complex, cross-domain engineering challenges in production environments EDUCATION * Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field required * Master's degree in Computer Science or Engineering from an accredited university highly preferred TECHNICAL SKILLS * Backend Development: Python (we use Python 3), strong understanding of web frameworks and APIs * Database Design: Experience with both NoSQL and SQL databases * Cloud Infrastructure: Google Cloud Platform or similar cloud platforms * Architecture Patterns: Domain-driven design, clean architecture, CQRS * System Design: Ability to design systems that balance performance, maintainability, and business requirements * Distributed Systems: Event-driven architectures, microservices, and high-scale system design LEADERSHIP SKILLS * Strong communicator who can translate complex technical concepts for non-technical stakeholders * Experience setting technical direction and building alignment across engineering and product teams * Ability to hire, onboard, and grow engineering talent * Comfortable navigating ambiguity and making decisions with incomplete information PREFERRED EXPERIENCE * Financial Systems: Payment processing, fraud detection, or compliance systems * Financial Regulations: Understanding of AML, KYC, PCI DSS, or similar regulatory frameworks * Banking Integrations: Experience with financial APIs and money movement systems * High-Scale Systems: Experience with systems processing high transaction volumes * Third-Party Integrations: Experience coordinating multiple external service integrations WHY THIS ROLE MATTERS * Direct Impact: You'll lead a core part of a small engineering team building systems that power a growing fintech platform * Architecture Influence: Drive technical decisions that will scale with the business * Team Building: Shape engineering practices, culture, and the people who carry them forward * Complex Problems: Work on sophisticated challenges at the intersection of engineering and finance * Financial Innovation: Build and lead the teams building systems that enable new financial products and services WHAT WE OFFER * Competitive compensation with equity in a growing fintech company * Remote-first culture with flexible working arrangements * Small team, big impact - your work directly shapes our platform * Professional growth - lead technical decisions and mentor team members * Modern tech stack - work with cutting-edge cloud technologies * Mission-driven - build systems that power financial innovation   REMOTE WORK AND CULTURE Astra is a remote-first company hiring only within the U.S. We value thoughtful collaboration, clarity, and initiative. We’re proud to be an equal opportunity employer and are committed to building a diverse and inclusive team.   HOW TO APPLY We're looking for engineers who are excited by complex systems problems and have the educational background and experience to handle sophisticated challenges. If you're passionate about building mission-critical financial infrastructure and want to have a direct impact on our technical direction, we'd love to hear from you.