Senior Manager, Engineering

Very Good Security, Inc.; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 220,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible work hours

Competitive health benefits

VGS stock options

401k with 4% match

Life & disability insurance

Pre-tax FSA/HSA benefits

Parental leave program

Employee Assistance Program

Home internet reimbursement

Home office setup allowance

Professional learning reimbursement

Job summary

Very Good Security, Inc. seeks a Senior Engineering Manager to lead the Payments Acceptance team in a backend-heavy, AI-driven setting focused on value-added services like Network Tokens and 3DS.

This US-only role reports to the Senior Director of Payments Acceptance and requires directing an 8–10 person engineering group. You will drive AI-native delivery, partner on roadmaps, hire and mentor, and ensure security, performance, and reliability across the stack while embracing a remote-first

Qualifications

• 5+ years as an Engineering Manager, Technical Lead, or Architect in an enterprise or high-growth SaaS environment.
• Strong command of Agile, DevOps, and SRE practices tailored for AI-integrated development.
• Deep experience managing Java microservices, API fundamentals, event-driven architectures, and messaging platforms (SQS/Kafka).
• Cloud-native stack expertise with Kubernetes and public cloud (AWS).
• Experience defining SLAs/SLOs and using modern observability toolchains.
• Experience with SOC2, PCI-DSS, ISO27001 compliance and security in regulated environments.
• Lead-from-the-front mindset with ownership and continuous improvement.
• Active participation in team on-call rotations and incident response.

Responsibilities

• Drive AI-Native Delivery: oversee end-to-end lifecycle of services with AI-augmented development methodologies.
• Partner with Product Management to define feature roadmaps prioritizing security, performance, and scalability.
• Hire, coach, and mentor an 8–10 engineer team and build a high-performance culture.
• Collaborate with CTO and Tech Leads on architectural choices aligning with established patterns.
• Manage unplanned workstreams—incidents, vulnerabilities, defects—ensuring resilient systems.
• Coordinate with Payments Acceptance Foundations, Sustaining, Infrastructure, Shared Services and Security teams to unblock production.
• Foster code quality through rigorous testing, automation, and robust reviews for AI-driven workflows.
• Lead with humility and ownership, delivering value while maintaining customer focus.

Skills

Leadership Experience

AI-augmented SDLC

Technical Depth

Cloud Native Stack

Operational Track Record

Compliance & Security

Management Philosophy

On-call Rotations

Tools

Kubernetes

AWS

Job description

VGS is the world's leader in payment tokenization. Large banks, aspiring fintechs, and growing merchants embed our universal token vault into their technology stack to manage the complexities of payment data tokenization across processors and networks, open banking, card issuance, omnichannel loyalty, PCI compliance, payment orchestration, and more. We empower our clients and partners by tokenizing sensitive payment data, limiting compliance scope, and consolidating payments to unlock revenue and business opportunities.

VGS provides processor-agnostic tokenization solutions via secure universal token vaults, iframes, mobile SDKs, tokenization proxies, APIs, and data orchestration tooling to support payment acceptance, card issuance, PII and bank account tokenization, and other payments value-added services. Some of the use cases we enable include multi-processor Network Tokenization, Account Updater, payment orchestration, secure settlement file processing, 3DS, and Risk provider connectivity.

VGS is looking for a Senior Engineering Manager (US-only) to lead our Payments Acceptance team. This is a backend-heavy leadership role focused on expanding our Value-Added Services (VAS)—the high-impact products built on our flagship platform, including Network Tokens, Account Updater, 3DS, and Account Validation.

Reporting to the Senior Director of Payments Acceptance, you will lead an autonomous team of 8–10 engineers. You will work hand-in-hand with Product Management, the CTO, the tech leads, and an adjacent team focused on CMP foundational capabilities. We are looking for a leader who is passionate about AI-native engineering management—someone who can scale a team that leverages agentic workflows to deliver enterprise-grade, mission-critical financial products while achieving exceptional quality, scalability, reliability, and security.

What you will be doing at VGS (Responsibilities)...

• Drive AI-Native Delivery: Oversee the end-to-end lifecycle of services using AI-augmented development methodologies. You will lead the shift in how we design, build, test, deploy, monitor and operate services in VGS production environments.
• Strategic Partnership: Partner with Product Management to define the feature roadmap ensuring security, performance, and scalability are prioritized alongside new value-added services.
• Lead from the Front: Hire, coach, and mentor a high-performing team. You aren’t just a people manager; you are a culture-builder who raises the bar for engineering excellence and "leads by doing."
• Architectural Oversight: Collaborate with the CTO and Tech Leads to drive design choices, ensuring your team’s services follow established patterns while remaining innovative.
• Operational Excellence: Manage unplanned workstreams—incidents, vulnerabilities, and defects with a sharp focus on building resilient, self-healing systems.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with Payments Acceptance Foundations, Sustaining, Infrastructure, Shared Services and Security teams to resolve dependencies and ensure a seamless path to production for VAS products.
• Cultivate Code Quality: Foster a rigorous engineering culture centered on comprehensive testing, automation, and robust code reviews, tailored specifically for AI-augmented development workflows.
• Embody Our Leadership Principles: Lead with humility and respect, delight our customers, raise the bar, create immense value, and act as a true owner—going above and beyond to do the right thing for our company while having fun along the way.

What we are looking for from you (Requirements)...

• Leadership Experience: 5+ years as an Engineering Manager, Technical / Team lead, or Architect in an enterprise or high-growth SaaS environment.
• AI-augmented SDLC: A strong command of Agile, DevOps, and SRE practices, specifically adapted for AI-integrated development (e.g., managing agent-generated code pipelines and automated testing suites).
• Technical Depth: Deep experience managing a mesh of microservices written in Java. Strong command of API fundamentals, event-driven architectures, messaging platforms like SQS/Kafka, SQL/NoSQL databases, and enterprise data platforms requiring best-in-class performance, scale, security, and availability.
• Cloud Native Stack: Experience with container-orchestration based delivery paradigms, preferably Kubernetes, and experience with modern SaaS toolchain in a public cloud environment, preferably AWS.
• Operational Track Record: Experience defining and maintaining SLAs/SLOs and navigating modern observability toolchains.
• Compliance & Security: Experience operating within regulated compliance frameworks such as SOC2, PCI-DSS, and ISO27001.
• Management Philosophy: A proclivity to "lead from the front" through continuous improvement in people, process, and technology, combined with humility to empower your team to take true ownership.
• Participate in team-based on-call rotations to maintain system reliability, actively responding to incidents, troubleshooting production issues, and conducting root cause analysis to drive long-term service improvements.

$180,000 - $220,000 a year

What you get from us...

• Flexible work hours and flexible PTO
• Competitive health benefits
• VGS stock options
• 401k plan, with employer matching 4% and immediate vesting (available only for US employees)
• Life & disability insurance
• Pre-tax flexible spending accounts, dependent and healthcare FSA (available only for US employees)
• Global parental leave program
• Employee Assistance Program
• Home Internet reimbursement
• New hire home office set-up allowance
• Professional learning reimbursement

At VGS, we have a remote-first philosophy because we believe flexibility leads to great work and a healthy work-life balance. That said, if you live within 30 miles of one of our office locations, you’ll be on a hybrid schedule with some in-person time—because we know there’s real value in coming together.

We’re not about being in the office every day—but weareabout connection, collaboration, and the energy that comes from a great brainstorm, a team lunch, or celebrating a big win in person.

We consider applicants without regard to race, color, national origin, sex, age, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, marital status, physical or mental disability, or other protected classes under all local, state, and federal laws and ordinances (AA/EOE/W/M/Vet/Disabled).

Qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records will be considered for the position in accordance with the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.

Please note we are currently only hiring in the following states...

Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Ontario (Canada), Alberta (Canada), or British Columbia (Canada).