Engineering Manager

tyfone; Bengaluru; On-site; INR 3,000,000 - 6,000,000; Full time

Job summary

Payfinia in India is seeking an Engineering Manager to lead a core engineering team, aligning product, QA, and DevOps to deliver features on time. You will work with US leadership and financial partners, driving architecture reviews and AI-SDLC adoption.

You will manage 10–15 engineers across Java/Spring Boot, Node.js, and React.js stacks, conduct regular performance conversations, shape hiring, and foster a culture of ownership and high-quality delivery within a distributed team.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of software engineering experience, with leadership exposure
• Proven experience leading multi-disciplinary teams (10+ members) in SaaS
• Strong full-stack capabilities across Node.js, React.js, and Java/Spring Boot
• Experience managing distributed/remote teams across time zones
• Demonstrated adoption of AI development tools to improve engineering productivity

Responsibilities

• Lead 10–15 engineers across Java, Node.js, and React.js stacks, guiding through 2–3 tech leads
• Conduct regular 1:1s, performance reviews, and career development conversations
• Drive hiring—own technical interviews and build a high-quality engineering pipeline
• Foster ownership, continuous learning, and AI-augmented productivity
• Coordinate with QA and external contractors for delivery
• Participate in architecture, design, and code reviews across the stack
• Ensure engineering best practices: security-by-design, observability, and docs
• Own quality gates for multi-tenant SaaS releases
• Promote AI-assisted development across the SDLC and establish usage standards
• Represent engineering in scoping and integration discussions with US partners

Skills

Leadership

Full-stack development

Node.js

React.js

Java/Spring Boot

Distributed teams

AI tooling adoption

Tools

GitHub Actions

Jenkins

Job description

Payfinia is a SaaS payment hub powering community banks and credit unions across the United States. Our flagship product, IPX (Instant Payment Exchange) , enables real-time payment processing across major payment rails including FedNow and RTP . We build secure, scalable, cloud-native financial infrastructure that empowers smaller financial institutions to compete at the highest level.

We are a fast-growing engineering organization with deep roots in AWS, microservices, and payment compliance. We are looking for a seasoned Engineering Manager to join our leadership team at our India development center .

Role Overview

We are looking for an Engineering Manager based in India who is as comfortable reviewing a system design as they are running a sprint planning session. You will lead one of our core engineering teams, take full ownership of feature delivery, and work closely with Product, QA, and DevOps — as well as our US-based leadership, client teams, and financial institution partners.

This is a hands-on leadership role . You will operate through 2–3 tech leads and senior engineers while personally engaging in architecture reviews, critical-path technical decisions, and AI-SDLC adoption — not just managing timelines. You will be expected to drive autonomous decision-making during India business hours and maintain proactive communication across a 10–15 hour time zone gap.

Key Responsibilities

Lead, mentor, and grow a team of 10–15 engineers across Java, Node.js, and React.js stacks, operating through 2–3 tech leads

Conduct regular 1:1s, performance reviews, and career development conversations

Drive hiring — own technical interviews and build a high-quality engineering pipeline

Foster a culture of ownership, continuous learning, engineering pride, and AI-augmented productivity

Manage and coordinate with QA team, and external contractors

Technical Leadership

Actively participate in architecture, design, and code reviews across the stack

Make or guide key technical decisions on microservices design, API contracts, data modeling, and integration patterns

Ensure adherence to engineering best practices: code quality, security-by-design, observability, and documentation

Own technical quality gates for multi-tenant SaaS releases

AI-Assisted Development - Drive adoption of AI coding tools (GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Cursor, or equivalents) across the team; establish usage guidelines, measure productivity impact, and share best practices

AI Across the SDLC - Integrate AI into the full development lifecycle: AI-driven test case generation, automated code review augmentation, design document drafting, incident root-cause analysis, and documentation generation

Measurement & Governance - Define and track AI productivity metrics (AI-assisted code coverage, review cycle time reduction, defect escape rates); ensure AI tooling usage complies with PCI-DSS, SOC 2, and data residency requirements; establish prompt engineering standards and reusable context libraries for the team

Delivery & Execution

Own the end-to-end delivery lifecycle for your team's domain - from planning and sprint execution to production deployment and post-go-live support

Collaborate with Product Managers to refine requirements, estimate effort, and translate roadmap into executable plans

Drive risk identification and mitigation - proactively surface blockers and manage dependencies across teams

Support multi-tenant SaaS releases including customer onboarding, integration certification, and go-live events

Own deployment frequency, lead time, and change failure rate improvements for your team's domain

Security & Compliance

Participate in threat modeling and secure SDLC practices for payment processing workflows

Ensure team adherence to PCI-DSS, SOC 2 compliance requirements as operational realities, not checkboxes

Support security incident response - coordinate remediation, produce root-cause analyses, and drive hardening initiatives

Maintain audit-ready engineering practices: code review documentation, change management records, access control hygiene

Stakeholder & Client Engagement

Represent engineering in scoping, discovery, and integration discussions with US-based financial institution partners and third-party vendors (expect periodic evening IST calls)

Maintain clear, proactive communication with internal and external stakeholders across time zones — default to over-communication given the distributed model

Provide regular engineering status, risk, and delivery updates to US-based leadership without requiring prompting

Required Qualifications

Experience

12+ years of total software engineering experience , with at least 1–2 years in an Engineering Manager or Tech Lead Manager role

Proven experience leading multi-disciplinary engineering teams (10+) in a SaaS or product-based environment

Strong background in full-stack development — hands-on expertise across at least two of: Node.js , React.js , Java/Spring Boot

Experience managing distributed/remote teams across time zones, including vendor and contractor coordination

Demonstrated experience adopting AI development tools and driving engineering productivity improvements

Technical Skills

React.js — Component architecture, state management (Redux/Zustand/Context), modern hooks, performance optimization

Databases — PostgreSQL/MySQL (relational modeling, query optimization), Redis (caching, pub/sub)

API Security — OAuth 2.0, JWT, mTLS, API Gateway patterns, WAF concepts

CI/CD & DevOps — GitHub Actions, Jenkins, or similar pipelines; familiarity with GitOps principles

AI Development Tools — Working proficiency with at least one AI coding assistant (Copilot, Claude Code, Cursor); understanding of LLM capabilities and limitations in software engineering workflows

Domain Knowledge (Strongly Preferred)

Experience in fintech, banking, or payment systems — understanding of payment rails (ACH, FedNow, RTP, Wire) and payment message lifecycles

Familiarity with PCI-DSS, SOC 2 , or other financial compliance/security frameworks

Exposure to IBM MQ , Salesforce , core banking systems (Symitar, Corelation, DNA, XP2), or multi-tenant FI onboarding patterns

Soft Skills

Strong communication skills — able to translate complex technical topics for non-technical stakeholders and communicate clearly in writing.

High ownership mindset with a bias for action and autonomous decision-making

Comfortable operating in ambiguity and driving clarity in a fast-paced, distributed environment

Collaborative leader who can balance empathy with accountability

Proactive communicator who defaults to transparency — doesn't wait to be asked for updates