Senior Engineering Manager, Backend/Platform

Sentilink
United States
Remote

Who this role is best for

A natural match if you have experience leading backend teams in fintech or highly regulated environments. This role favors candidates with a technical background in API-driven systems and a preference for in-office collaboration, particularly in U.S. locations.

Best fit for

  • Candidates with 3-7 years of backend engineering management experience in a fast-paced startup environment
    — “3-7 years of engineering management experience leading backend or platform teams”
  • Individuals who have built scalable, secure, and maintainable backend systems in production
    — “Experience owning and evolving backend architecture in production environments”
  • Candidates with a strong technical foundation in Golang, Python, and distributed systems design
    — “Deep experience building API-driven systems using languages like Golang, Python, or similar”

Things to consider

  • This role may require regular in-office presence near U.S. locations like Austin or San Francisco
    — “If you’re located near one of these offices, we would love for you to spend time in the office regularly”
  • Candidates must be prepared to lead technical discussions and contribute to system design
    — “Comfortable leading technical discussions and diving into implementation details”

How to stand out

  • Highlight your experience in building and maintaining high-performance, secure backend systems
    — “Own the technical direction of backend services and APIs, ensuring systems are secure, performant, and maintainable”
  • Emphasize your track record of shipping complex, customer-facing systems in a fast-paced environment
    — “Track record of shipping complex, customer-facing or platform systems”
  • Showcase your ability to guide long-term platform evolution and make architectural decisions
    — “Contribute to architectural decisions and guide the long-term evolution of our platform”
Pace · Fast PacedCollaboration · HighAutonomy · HighDecision Impact · TeamLevel · Senior

Derived from job-description analysis by Serendipath's career intelligence engine.

What success looks like

  • lead and grow a team of backend/platform engineers
  • drive execution
  • evolve platform architecture
Typical background
strong backend engineerpeople leadershiptechnical architecture

Skills & requirements

Required

Backend Platform DevelopmentTechnical ArchitecturePeople LeadershipApi-driven SystemsPlatform Architecture

Preferred

Identity VerificationRisk SolutionsFinancial Services

Stack & domain

Backend EngineeringPlatform DevelopmentTechnical ArchitecturePeople LeadershipProduct TeamsApi-driven SystemsPlatform ArchitectureScalabilityReliabilitySecurityReactGoPythonPostgreSQLDockerOpensearchAWS LambdaAWS CognitoAWS Standard Services

About the role

Original posting from Sentilink via Ashby

SentiLink https://www.sentilink.com/ provides innovative identity and risk solutions, empowering institutions and individuals to transact with confidence. We’re building the future of identity verification in the United States replacing a clunky, ineffective, and expensive status quo with solutions that are 10x faster, smarter, and more accurate.

We’ve seen tremendous traction and are growing extremely quickly. Our real-time APIs have helped verify hundreds of millions of identities, starting with financial services and rapidly expanding into new markets. SentiLink is backed by world-class investors including Craft Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, NYCA, and Max Levchin.

We’ve earned recognition from TechCrunch, CNBC, Bloomberg, Forbes, Business Insider, PYMNTS, American Banker, LendIt, and have been named to the Forbes Fintech 50 https://www.forbes.com/companies/sentilink/?list=fintech50. We have also been named a 2026 FICO Industry Vanguard Decision Award Winner https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260330439998/en/SentiLink-Named-a-2026-FICO-Industry-Vanguard-Decision-Award-Winner-for-Leadership-in-Identity-Theft-Detection. Last but not least, we’ve even made history - we were the first company to go live with the eCBSV https://resources.sentilink.com/blog/sentilink-makes-history-as-first-ecbsv-provider and testified before the United States House of Representatives https://resources.sentilink.com/media/sentilinks-statement-before-the-house-financial-services-committee on the future of identity.

SentiLink supports a variety of ways to work, ranging from fully remote to in-office. We operate as a digital-first company with strong collaboration across the U.S. and India. We maintain physical offices in Austin, San Francisco, New York City, Seattle (Bellevue), Los Angeles, and Chicago in the U.S., and in Gurugram (Delhi) and Bengaluru in India. If you’re located near one of these offices, we would love for you to spend time in the office regularly. Some roles are hybrid or in-office by design. For example, our engineering team in India works primarily from our Gurugram office.

ROLE:

We’re looking for a strong Senior Engineering Manager to lead a backend/platform-focused engineering team responsible for powering SentiLink’s core products.

This team owns the backend systems, external APIs, and services that power these experiences, as well as the technical foundation that ensures the product is scalable, reliable, and secure.

You will lead a small but growing team of engineers responsible for building API-driven systems, evolving our platform architecture, and enabling product teams to move quickly with confidence.

This role sits at the intersection of backend platform development, technical architecture, and people leadership. You’ll partner closely with product, data science, infrastructure, and front-end engineering teams to deliver high-quality systems in a fast-moving environment.

We are looking for a manager who is fundamentally a strong backend engineer and enjoys staying close to technical work, contributing to architecture, guiding design decisions, and unblocking complex systems challenges.

This is a remote, US-based position.

Technologies: React, Golang, Python, PostgreSQL (RDS), Docker, OpenSearch, AWS technologies (Lambda, Cognito and other standard services)

RESPONSIBILITIES:

  • Lead and grow a team of backend/platform engineers building the systems that power Intercept and other critical applications
  • Drive execution across planning, prioritization, and delivery with a focus on reliability and scalability
  • Own the technical direction of backend services and APIs, ensuring systems are secure, performant, and maintainable
  • Partner with product and front-end teams to translate product requirements into robust backend architectures
  • Collaborate with data science to productionize models and integrate decisioning systems into APIs and workflows
  • Work closely with infrastructure to improve system reliability, observability, and developer experience
  • Contribute to architectural decisions and guide the long-term evolution of our platform
  • Maintain high standards for code quality, testing, and operational excellence
  • Support incident response and ensure systems meet SLA expectations
  • Hire, mentor, and develop engineers while maintaining a high hiring bar
  • Foster a culture of ownership, accountability, and continuous improvement
  • Contribute to code and technical problem-solving as needed

REQUIREMENTS:

  • 3-7 years of engineering management experience leading backend or platform teams
  • Strong background as a senior or staff-level backend engineer
  • Deep experience building API-driven systems using languages like Golang, Python, or similar
  • Strong understanding of distributed systems, scalability, and system design
  • Experience owning and evolving backend architecture in production environments
  • Track record of shipping complex, customer-facing or platform systems
  • Comfortable leading technical discussions and diving into implementation details
  • Experience working in fast-paced, startup or growth-stage environments
  • Experience building platforms that support product teams (internal APIs, shared services, developer tooling) preferred
  • Familiarity with data-intensive systems, search (OpenSearch), or risk/decisioning systems preferred
  • Experience in fintech or highly regulated environments preferred

COMPENSATION:

$200,000/year - $260,000/year + equity + benefits

PERKS:

  • Employer paid group health insurance for you and your dependents
  • 401(k) plan with employer match (or equivalent for non US-based roles)
  • Flexible paid time off
  • Regular company-wide in-person events
  • Home office stipend, and more!

CORPORATE VALUES:

  • Follow Through
  • Deep Understanding
  • Whatever It Takes
  • Do Something Smart

Source: Sentilink careers (Ashby)

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