Remote Engineering Manager — API-First, Distributed Systems

Kin Insurance, Inc.; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Equity (RSUs)

401(k) with match

Medical, dental, vision

HSA contributions

Life insurance

Disability insurance

Flexible PTO

Parental leave

Remote-first with offices

Job summary

Kin Insurance, Inc. is seeking an Engineering Manager to scale product architecture and elevate engineering execution. You will lead a full-stack team across front-end and back-end systems, guiding a transition toward distributed, modular services while delivering customer-facing innovation.

This hands-on leader will balance rapid product development with long-term reliability, performance, and clear ownership, acting as a player-coach and shaping technical strategy.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of hands-on software development experience with strong computer science fundamentals.
• Proven experience managing or leading a team of engineers in a fast-paced environment.
• Demonstrated success acting as a player-coach who contributes meaningfully to the codebase.
• Experience building distributed systems and decomposing monoliths into modular services.
• Hands-on experience with API-first and schema-first workflows (OpenAPI/Swagger, contract testing, interface-driven development).
• Experience with relational and NoSQL databases, message queues/brokers, and distributed system design patterns.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop a high-performing full-stack engineering team, fostering ownership, accountability, and continuous growth.
• Serve as a hands-on player-coach, contributing meaningful production code while setting technical direction.
• Drive delivery of roadmap initiatives from concept through production with predictable, high-quality execution.
• Champion API-first design and schema-first development practices (OpenAPI/Swagger, contract testing, interface-driven development).
• Guide the decomposition of monolithic systems into modular, distributed services with clear ownership boundaries.
• Establish best practices for observability, resilience, and distributed communication (tracing, retries, idempotency, error handling).
• Lead architectural discussions to ensure long-term maintainability, reliability, and performance.
• Partner cross-functionally with Product, PMO, and other engineering teams to align technical strategy with business priorities.
• Participate in recruiting, interviewing, and hiring to strengthen the engineering organization.

Skills

Software development

Team leadership

Player-coach

Distributed systems

API-first

OpenAPI/Swagger

Relational databases

NoSQL databases

Message queues

SDLC

Communication

Tools

Looker

BigTable

Ruby on Rails

Job description

Kin Insurance, Inc. is seeking an Engineering Manager to scale product architecture and elevate engineering execution. You will lead a full-stack team across front-end and back-end systems, guiding a transition toward distributed, modular services while delivering customer-facing innovation.

This hands-on leader will balance rapid product development with long-term reliability, performance, and clear ownership, acting as a player-coach and shaping technical strategy.