Engineering Manager, Infrastructure

Kikoff; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 307,000 - 352,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work model

Job summary

Kikoff's infrastructure team builds the systems that let engineering move quickly without sacrificing reliability, security, or cost discipline. As Engineering Manager, you will lead and grow this team, set technical direction, and run infrastructure as a product for Kikoff engineers.

This player-coach role keeps you close to code, architecture, incidents, and people, reviewing designs, making architecture calls, and contributing directly when needed to ensure durable, scalable platforms for a

Qualifications

• 8+ years of engineering experience and 2+ years managing engineers.
• Strong infrastructure foundation; review code and designs; contribute directly when needed.
• Experience operating production systems and responding to incidents.
• Track record of hiring, coaching, and developing strong engineers.
• Experience setting technical direction and turning ambiguous infra problems into a roadmap.
• Comfort making decisions with incomplete information and clear communication with stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Lead, coach, and develop experienced infrastructure engineers across five areas.
• Own the technical direction across observability, developer productivity, compute, networking, storage, and data infrastructure.
• Run infrastructure as a product with focused roadmaps and self-service platforms for engineers.
• Build a durable operating model with owners, runbooks, SLOs, alerts, and cost-consciousness.

Skills

Engineering leadership

Infrastructure

Code review

Incident response

Hiring & coaching

Technical direction

Clear communication

Job description

Kikoff: The Fintech Powering Financial Security at Scale
Kikoff is a profitable, pre-IPO fintech company on a mission to empower everyone to achieve financial security. With record revenue growth in 2025 and a unicorn valuation, we've built a suite of products that help millions of people build credit, access liquidity, and save money.
We're scaling fast. Join us if you want to build something meaningful and help millions of people move forward financially.

Why Kikoff:

This is a consumer fintech startup, and you will be working with serial entrepreneurs who have built strong consumer brands and innovative products. We value extreme ownership, clear communication, a strong sense of craftsmanship, and the desire to create lasting work and work relationships. Yes, you can build an exciting business AND have real-life real-customer impact.

About the Role

Kikoff's infrastructure team builds the systems that let engineering move quickly without giving up reliability, security, or cost discipline. The team owns five connected areas: Observability, Developer Productivity, Compute Infrastructure, Networking and Storage, and Data Infrastructure.

As Engineering Manager, you will lead and grow this team, set technical direction, and run infrastructure as a product for Kikoff engineers. You will decide where the team should invest, help engineers turn ambiguous problems into durable systems, and make sure the work improves how the company builds and operates.

This is a player-coach role. You will stay close to the code, the architecture, the incidents, and the people. You should be comfortable reviewing code and designs, making architecture calls, and contributing directly when the team needs you. Strong ICs should respect your technical judgment because you understand the work, not because you report on it.

AI is increasing the amount of code and change moving through our systems. You will help build a platform that can absorb that growth without creating more incidents, unsustainable cost, or a team that depends on heroics.

In This Role, You Will

Lead and Grow the Team

• Lead, coach, and develop experienced infrastructure engineers across five connected areas.
• Hire engineers who can work across domains, take ownership of production outcomes, and earn the trust of their peers.
• Stay close enough to the work to coach from evidence. Review code and designs, challenge weak decisions, make architecture calls, and unblock the team directly when needed.
• Give each area clear ownership, backup coverage, growth paths, and a sustainable on-call model.

Own the Technical Direction

• Support the technical direction across observability, developer productivity, compute, networking, storage, and data infrastructure.
• Uphold high engineering standards for reliability, testing, safe deployments, security, and maintainability.
• Make clear tradeoffs between speed, reliability, cost, and long-term operating complexity.
• Lead through incidents and unfamiliar failure modes, then make sure the system is better after service is restored.

Run Infrastructure as a Product

• Understand what Kikoff engineers need and turn that into a focused roadmap with clear priorities.
• Build paved paths and self-service systems that teams choose because they are faster and safer than one-off solutions.
• Unblock teams through the fastest responsible path, then turn recurring friction into automation or a durable platform capability.
• Measure outcomes for internal customers, including delivery speed, reliability, cost, toil, and on-call load.

Build a Durable Operating Model

• Make sure critical services have an owner, backup, SLO, actionable alerts, dashboard, runbook, capacity expectations, and a tested recovery path.
• Use service health, incidents, delivery data, cost, and customer feedback to decide what the team works on next.
• Close incident actions and recurring operational gaps instead of allowing them to become permanent background work.
• Build an organization that does not depend on constant interrupts, heroics, or one person's memory to stay healthy.

You Have

• 8+ years of engineering experience and 2+ years managing engineers, or an equivalent record of technical leadership and people development.
• A strong infrastructure foundation. You can review code and designs, make architecture decisions, and contribute directly when needed.
• Experience operating consequential production systems, responding to incidents, and improving what remained after the immediate problem was solved.
• A track record of hiring, coaching, and developing strong engineers. You know what good looks like and can help people get there.
• Experience setting technical direction and turning ambiguous infrastructure problems into a roadmap the team can execute.
• Comfort making decisions with incomplete information and changing course when the evidence changes.
• Clear, direct communication with engineers, leadership, and cross-functional partners.

Nice to Have

• Depth in one or more of observability, cloud compute, networking, storage, data infrastructure, developer tooling, or security.
• Experience running internal platforms as a product in fintech or another regulated environment, including measuring adoption and customer outcomes through a period of rapid growth.

What We're Like

Scrappy. We move quickly and build what we need. We do not cut corners when they matter, and we do not over-engineer when they do not.

Risk-oriented. We make tradeoffs deliberately. A mature team knows the difference between a risk worth taking and one that is not.

Data-obsessed. We look at the data, understand the mechanics behind it, and use that evidence to make better decisions.

Humble. We know the company has benefited from timing, circumstance, and the right people showing up. We are grateful, and we do not take it for granted.

Base Range

$307,000 - $352,000 USD

Equal Employment Opportunity Statement

Kikoff Inc. is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to complying with all federal, state, and local laws providing equal employment opportunities and considers qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy, sex, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation, citizenship, or any other legally protected class.

This is a hybrid position and requires being in the San Francisco, CA office three times a week. Are you willing and able to commute to the San Francisco, CA office or would you be willing to relocate? * Select...