Engineering Manager: New Initiative
About the role
Kikoff is a profitable, pre-IPO fintech company focused on empowering millions of people to achieve financial security. This role leads a dedicated team working on a key product initiative, offering high autonomy, visibility, and direct involvement in the company's growth story.
Responsibilities
- Lead, coach, and develop a team of 4 engineers, aiming to grow to ~8 by the end of the year.
- Hire strong engineers who thrive in ambiguity, take ownership of outcomes, and care about craft.
- Create a highly collaborative team environment where engineers have real ownership, tackle high-impact work, and grow faster due to surrounding themselves with great people and difficult problems.
- Be hands-on early: reviewing code, making architecture calls, and unblocking the team directly when needed.
- Own the technical direction, define the architecture and foundational technical decisions for a new product built on Kikoff's existing platform.
- Uphold high engineering standards: code quality, testing discipline, system reliability, and safe deployments.
- Partner with Kikoff's app platform and foundation teams to build on shared, well-maintained infrastructure.
- Drive product outcomes by working closely with product and design to turn ambiguous problems into scoped, shippable work.
- Own the technical roadmap and ensure the team is always working on the highest-impact problems.
- Be a genuine collaborative partner to product and design—bring engineering creativity to open problems, surface possibilities they haven't considered, and stay curious about their perspective and user insights.
- Think in terms of outcomes for users and the business, not just features shipped.
Requirements
- 5+ years of software engineering experience with a strong backend or full-stack foundation: you can review code, make architecture decisions, and contribute directly when needed.
- 2+ years of engineering management experience, ideally with time building a new product or feature from scratch.
- A track record of shipping: you have taken products from idea to production and know what it takes to keep quality high while moving fast.
- Experience hiring and developing engineers: you know what good looks like, and you have a process for finding and growing it.
- Use AI like having an AI double helping you get more done like writing JDs 😉
- Strong product sense: you care about the "why" as much as the "how," and you can hold a product point of view even without a PM in the room.
- Comfort operating with ambiguity and incomplete information: you know how to make good decisions before all the facts are in.
- Clear, direct communication with your team, with leadership, and with cross-functional partners.
Qualifications
- Experience in consumer fintech, consumer mobile, or subscription products is a plus.
- Familiarity with Ruby on Rails, Flutter, and/or React is a plus.
- Experience building on top of an existing platform or within a shared ecosystem is a plus.
- Background at a company at a similar stage—profitable, scaling fast, pre-IPO—is a plus.
Skills
- Strong product sense
- Comfort operating with ambiguity and incomplete information
- Clear, direct communication
Benefits
Base Range: $307,000 - $352,000 USD
Equal Employment Opportunity Statement: Kikoff Inc. is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to complying with all federal, state, and local laws providing equal employment opportunities and consider qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy, sex, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation, citizenship, or any other legally protected class. Please reference the following for more information.
Pay
Base Range: $307,000 - $352,000 USD
Schedule
Not specified