Sr Engineeing Manager / Director - Infrastructure Engineering

StartX; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 272,174 - 289,639; Full time

Job summary

PayJoy is seeking a Senior Engineering Manager, Cloud Infrastructure to lead the team responsible for cloud infrastructure, developer platforms, and foundational services. The role shapes technical direction to deliver secure, reliable, scalable, and cost-efficient platforms that empower product teams to move fast and safely.

Partnering with executives across functions, you will drive large-scale initiatives, build robust processes, and foster a culture of accountability, inclusion, and

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in CS, Engineering, or related field.
• 12+ years software/infra experience.
• 4+ years engineering management.
• Experience building and scaling cloud-native platforms.
• Hands-on AWS and modern cloud architecture patterns.
• Strong DevOps, Infrastructure as Code, CI/CD, automation.
• Experience designing reliable, scalable cloud infrastructure for production.
• Strong understanding of software architecture, distributed systems, networking, security, observability.
• Experience leading organization-wide technical initiatives.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Define strategy and architecture for cloud infrastructure and developer platforms.
• Drive large-scale infrastructure initiatives with reliability, security, and cost optimization.
• Establish engineering processes, operating rhythms, service ownership models, and standards.
• Partner with Product, Engineering, Security, Compliance, Finance, and leadership to align investments with objectives.
• Foster accountability, inclusion, technical excellence, collaboration, and continuous improvement.

Skills

Cloud strategy

Engineering management

Distributed systems

DevOps

Leadership

Technical leadership

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

AWS

CI/CD

Job description

About PayJoy

PayJoy, a Public Benefit Corporation, is a mission-first credit provider dedicated to helping under-served customers in emerging markets to achieve financial stability and success. Our patented technology for secured credit provides an on-ramp for new customers to enter the credit system. Through PayJoy’s point-of-sale financing and card offerings, customers gain access to a modern quality of life. PayJoy’s credit also allows our customers to seize opportunities as micro-entrepreneurs, and acts as insurance for tough times. Through our cutting-edge machine learning, data science, and anti-fraud AI, we have served over 18 million customers as of 2025 while achieving solid profitability for sustainable growth.

This role

The Senior Engineering Manager, Cloud Infrastructure leads the engineering team responsible for the company’s cloud infrastructure, developer platform, and foundational engineering services. This role sets the technical and organizational direction for secure, reliable, scalable, and cost-efficient platforms that enable product engineering teams to deliver software quickly and safely. The role partners closely with Engineering, Product, Security, Compliance, and Operations leaders to align infrastructure investments with business priorities and long-term customer impact.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and execute the long-term strategy and architecture for cloud infrastructure, developer platforms, CI/CD systems, and shared engineering services that improve developer productivity and platform reliability.

• Drive delivery of large-scale infrastructure initiatives while balancing reliability, scalability, security, operational excellence, customer impact, and cost optimization.

• Establish engineering processes, operating rhythms, service ownership models, and technical standards that improve execution, software quality, incident response, and organizational efficiency.

• Partner with Product, Engineering, Security, Compliance, Finance, and Executive leadership to prioritize investments, manage technical risk, and align infrastructure capabilities with business objectives.

• Foster a culture of accountability, inclusion, technical excellence, collaboration, and continuous improvement.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.

• 12+ years of software engineering, infrastructure engineering, platform engineering, or related technical experience.

• 4+ years of engineering management experience

• Proven experience building, operating, and scaling highly available cloud-native platforms, distributed systems, or developer infrastructure.

• Hands-on experience with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and modern cloud architecture patterns.

• Strong background in DevOps practices, Infrastructure as Code, CI/CD systems, automation, and platform engineering.

• Experience designing reliable, scalable, secure, and cost-efficient cloud infrastructure for production environments.

• Strong understanding of software architecture, distributed systems, networking, storage, security, observability, and operational excellence principles.

• Experience balancing technical debt, infrastructure investment, risk reduction, and feature delivery to maximize long-term business value.

• Demonstrated success leading organization-wide technical initiatives across multiple engineering teams and stakeholders.

• Strong incident management and operational leadership experience, including escalation management, post-incident reviews, and systemic reliability improvements.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to influence technical and business leaders and communicate tradeoffs clearly.

• Proven ability to recruit, coach, mentor, and retain high-performing engineering managers, staff engineers, and senior individual contributors.

$272,174 - $289,639 a year

PayJoy is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer and we welcome and encourage people of all backgrounds. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.

PayJoy Principles

Finance for the next billion * Ownership * Break Through Walls * Live Communication * Transparency & Directness * Focus on Scale * Work-Life Balance * Embrace Diversity * Speed * Active Listening