Support Engineering Lead

Sardine; United States; Remote; USD 140,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Cash and equity

Remote-first culture

Flexible PTO

Health coverage

401k with match

MacBook Pro

Home office stipend

Meal stipend

Social stipend

Learning stipend

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 engineers, resolve complex issues, and build processes that enable global operation across time zones.

You will hire, coach, and set the standards for incident response, telemetry, and customer outcomes, while partnering with Eng, Product, and CS to improve platform quality.

Qualifications

• 7+ years in technical support or software engineering with hands-on development experience.
• 3+ years leading technical support teams with performance management and coaching.
• Hands-on technical background; prior software development is a strong plus.
• Proficiency with SQL and REST APIs; comfortable with debugging/observability tools.
• Experience in both startup and larger company environments.
• Experience running high-volume support operations with enterprise SLAs and on-call duties.
• Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering or equivalent.

Responsibilities

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of Support Engineers, driving accountability and growth.
• Own service delivery end-to-end; escalate complex technical issues with customers.
• Dive into tickets, debug API issues, join customer calls, and lead incident response.
• Build and enforce incident management, escalation playbooks, and quality reviews.
• Define and track team metrics and dashboards; surface systemic issues for improvement.
• Partner with Engineering, Product, and Customer Success to advocate for customers.
• Champion AI and automation, including AI Assistant features to boost productivity.
• Lead hiring, onboarding, and career development to scale the team.
• Represent the support function in cross-functional forums and share operational data.

Skills

Technical leadership

People management

SQL

REST APIs

Debugging and observability

Cross-functional collaboration

Startup & scale-up background

On-call incident management

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or Engineering

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 have hubs in the Bay Area, NYC, Austin, Toronto, and São Paulo. However, we maintain a remote-first work culture. #WorkFromAnywhere
• 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.

Location

• Remote - United States, West Coast preferred
• From Home / Beach / Mountain / Cafe / Anywhere!
• We are a remote-first company with a globally distributed team. You can find your productive zone and work from there.

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

Join a fast-growing company with world-class professionals from around the world. If you are seeking a meaningful career, you found the right place, and we would love to hear from you.

To learn more about how we process your personal information and your rights in regards to your personal information as an applicant and Sardine employee, please visit our Applicant and Worker Privacy Notice.