Support Engineering Lead

Sardine; North (SC); Remote; USD 140,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Generous cash and equity compensation

Remote-first culture

Flexible PTO and year-end break

Health, dental, vision coverage

Job summary

Sardine is seeking a Support Engineering Lead to own and scale the technical support experience for our API-driven fraud and payments platform. You will lead a team of Support Engineers, resolve complex issues, and build the processes and tooling to operate across global time zones.

You will be a player-coach with strong technical foundation, capable of coding, understanding systems deeply, and leading people with a bias for action. Join a startup-spirited team with scale and impact.

Qualifications

• 7+ years in technical support, support engineering, software engineering, or related technical role.
• 3+ years managing technical support teams, including performance management and coaching.
• Hands-on technical background; prior software development experience is a strong plus.
• Proficiency with SQL and REST APIs; comfortable using debugging and observability tools.
• Experience in both startup and larger company environments.

Responsibilities

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of Support Engineers, driving accountability and growth.
• Own service delivery end-to-end, as primary escalation point for complex issues and enterprise customers.
• Hands-on with tickets, debugging API issues, customer calls, and incident response with your team.
• Build and enforce operational processes including incident management and escalation playbooks.
• Define and track team metrics and dashboards to drive continuous improvement.
• Partner with Engineering, Product, and Customer Success to advocate for customer needs.

Skills

Technical leadership

Support engineering

SQL

REST APIs

Debugging tools

Enterprise SLAs

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering

Tools

Observability tools

Job description

Who We Are

Sardine is the leading agentic risk platform for fighting financial crime. Our integrated solution unifies data across risk teams to help organizations stop fraud in real time, prevent AI-driven attacks, and automate fraud and AML operations. Sardine’s platform is strengthened by one of the fastest-growing fraud consortiums in the market, spanning more than 6 billion profiled devices, 800 million consumers, and 3 million businesses worldwide. Leading companies including FIS, GoDaddy, Intuit, Edward Jones, ZoomInfo, and Checkout.com rely on Sardine to secure and grow trust in their products.

Our Culture

• We hire talented, self-motivated individuals with extreme ownership and high growth orientation.


• We value performance and not hours worked. We believe you shouldn't have to miss your family dinner, your kid's school play, friends get-together, or doctor's appointments for the sake of adhering to an arbitrary work schedule.


• We're a remote-first team spread across time zones, so no office to report to - work from wherever helps you do your best work. Just a couple of things to keep in mind: pay is based on where you're located, and you'll need to keep a home base in the country you're hired in. So while we love the \"coffee shop today, mountains tomorrow\" life, this isn't a passport-optional, work-from-anywhere-on-Earth kind of remote - think flexible within your country, not borderless.

Location

• Remote - United States, West Coast preferred

About The Role

We're looking for a Support Engineering Lead to own and scale the technical support experience at Sardine. This role sits at the intersection of deep technical ownership, people leadership, and operational excellence. You'll lead a team of Support Engineers who resolve complex issues across Sardine's API-driven fraud and payments platform, while building the processes, tooling, and culture that enable the team to operate at a high level across global time zones.

You'll be a player-coach with a strong technical foundation, someone who has written code before, understands systems at depth, and isn't afraid to get into the weeds of a hard problem. You know how to lead people, but your instinct is always to understand the technical reality first. You've worked in startups and know what it means to move fast, own outcomes, and build things that didn't exist before. The ideal candidate brings the structure and experience of a larger company with the scrappiness and bias for action of a startup operator.

What You'll Be Doing

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of Support Engineers, driving accountability, continuous growth, and a high-performance culture


• Own service delivery end-to-end, acting as the primary escalation point for complex technical issues and enterprise customer situations


• Get hands‑on when it counts, diving into tickets, debugging API issues, joining customer calls, and leading incident response alongside your team


• Build and enforce operational processes including incident management, escalation playbooks, and internal quality review frameworks


• Define and track team metrics and dashboards, using data to identify trends, surface systemic issues, and drive continuous improvement


• Partner with Engineering, Product, and Customer Success to advocate for customer needs and influence platform improvements


• Champion AI and automation adoption, including Pylon's AI Assistant, to improve team productivity and service quality


• Lead hiring, onboarding, and career development to scale the support organization as Sardine grows


• Represent the support function in cross‑functional forums and contribute to strategic decisions with customer insights and operational data

What You'll Bring

• 7+ years in technical support, support engineering, software engineering, or a related technical role, ideally with a background that includes hands‑on development or engineering experience


• 3+ years managing technical support teams, including performance management and coaching


• Hands‑on technical background, prior software development experience is a strong plus


• Proficiency with SQL and REST APIs; comfortable using debugging and observability tools


• Experience in both startup and larger company environments


• Experience running high-volume support operations with enterprise SLAs and on‑call responsibilities


• Able to go deep technically and lead people effectively, both matter in this role


• Track record of building or improving processes around incident response, escalations, and service quality


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

Benefits We Offer

• Generous compensation in cash and equity


• Early exercise for all options, including pre-vested


• Work from anywhere: Remote-first Culture


• Flexible paid time off and Year-end break


• Health insurance, dental, and vision coverage for employees and dependents - US and Canada specific


• 4% matching in 401k / RRSP - US and Canada specific


• MacBook Pro delivered to your door


• One‑time stipend to set up a home office — desk, chair, screen, etc.


• Monthly meal stipend


• Monthly social meet‑up stipend


• Annual health and wellness stipend


• Annual Learning stipend

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