Engineering Manager

About Astra Astra is a high-impact engineering team building mission-critical financial infrastructure. Our fintech platform powers payment processing, fraud detection, and financial compliance for businesses handling 100M+ in weekly transaction volume. We maintain 99.9%+ uptime, process complex cross-border payments, and coordinate with multiple third-party financial services while meeting strict regulatory requirements. The Role We're looking for an Engineering Manager to lead and grow a team of backend engineers building the systems that power our fintech platform. This is a player-coach role, your primary job is team leadership, delivery, and people development, with enough hands-on technical involvement to stay credible in design discussions and step in when it counts. You'll own the health of your team's execution, from sprint planning to career growth to hiring, while partnering with senior engineers on the architecture decisions that shape payments, fraud detection, compliance, and user management across our distributed systems. What You'll Do Lead and Develop Your Team : Manage a team of backend engineers, running a rigorous delivery process, conducting regular 1:1s, and supporting career growth across all levels of the team. Manage Delivery : Own sprint planning, milestone tracking, and velocity. Catch slipping projects early, remove blockers, and balance technical quality with business speed so the team ships reliably. Hire and Grow Talent : Own hiring for your team, from screening through onboarding, and build the structures (leveling, mentorship, promotion paths) that help engineers grow. Build Engineering Culture : Establish the norms, standards, and practices, code review, on-call, planning cadence, that define how your team works day to day. Partner Across the Organization : Work closely with product, compliance, and other engineering teams to translate business and regulatory needs into a clear execution plan for your team. Guide Technical Direction : Weigh in on architecture decisions for payment processing, fraud detection, and compliance systems, and make sure your team is set up to make sound technical tradeoffs without you in every decision. Stay Hands-On : Spend a meaningful chunk of your time in the codebase, code review, design review, and picking up complex work directly, especially where it unblocks the team or where your experience adds the most leverage. This is not a purely managerial role, but management and delivery come first. What We're Looking For Requirements 2+ years of experience leading an engineering team, including performance management, hiring, and career development, this is the core of the role 5+ years of overall software engineering experience, with enough recent hands-on depth to stay credible in technical discussions and contribute directly when needed Demonstrated ability to run a delivery process: sprint planning, milestone tracking, and catching problems before they become fire drills Experience as a player-coach, comfortable spending most of your time on people and delivery while still being able to step into technical work Ability and willingness to travel up to ~15% annually Education Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field required Master's degree in Computer Science or Engineering from an accredited university highly preferred Technical Skills Backend Development: Python (we use Python 3), solid understanding of web frameworks and APIs Database Design: Familiarity with both NoSQL and SQL databases Cloud Infrastructure: Google Cloud Platform or similar Architecture Patterns: Working familiarity with domain-driven design, clean architecture, and event-driven/microservices patterns, enough to guide and evaluate decisions your team makes Leadership Skills Strong track record running 1:1s, performance conversations, and team structure decisions Data-driven approach to delivery: tracks velocity, cycle time, or similar, not purely gut-feel Experie