Engineering Manager – Foundations

Building the Future of Open Finance Payward - the parent company behind Kraken, Ninja Trader, Breakout, xStocks, Payward Services and CF Benchmarks - has spent the last 15 years building one of the most modern and globally accessible financial infrastructure platforms in the industry, built to advance an open, global financial system.

Before you apply, we encourage you to explore our culture page to understand what drives us and how we work.

The team Founded in 2011, Kraken is one of the world's longest-standing crypto platforms, trusted by over 10 million individuals and institutions across the globe. It offers spot trading, margin, futures, staking, and OTC services, with products built for both individual investors and institutional clients.

The Growth Foundations team builds the AI-native Growth Engine, enabling Growth teams across the company. We design and ship powerful AI-driven systems, tools and automations, as well as own the core infrastructure of Growth tools such as our website, user communications and martech. It’s a team with direct influence on company growth, global reach, and user engagement  products serve millions of users globally.

The Role As an Engineering Manager within Growth Foundations, you’ll lead and develop a team of engineers who deliver high-impact features, platforms, and tools that power our growth. You’ll ensure the team is aligned, supported, and set up to execute with excellence — turning complex challenges into simple, reliable solutions that reach users around the world. You will also stay hands-on and deliver production grade features personally every day.

The opportunity

Lead, mentor, and support a cross-functional team of engineers delivering growth-critical systems and features

Collaborate daily with Product and Design to define scope, set priorities, and ensure seamless execution

Keep projects moving forward — maintaining clear expectations, realistic estimates, and transparent communication with stakeholders

Provide technical guidance and context to help engineers make sound architectural and implementation decisions

Foster a culture of accountability, trust, and learning — helping the team grow their impact and autonomy

Improve team processes, communication, and collaboration across time zones

Partner with other engineering leaders to ensure consistency and best practices across the broader Growth organization

Leverage AI tooling daily to boost personal and team productivity

Stay hands-on in the codebase, writing production-grade code and setting the bar for quality, reliability, and speed

What you bring

Experience leading engineering teams and delivering high-quality results in a collaborative environment

Strong people leadership skills — you invest in coaching, clarity, and empowerment

Solid technical foundation, especially on the backend; you can engage in design discussions, code reviews, and help engineers make pragmatic decisions

Strong individual contributor background — you write production-grade code and lead by example

High proficiency in modern AI-driven development — you use AI daily to boost personal and team performance through automation

Familiarity with one or more modern programming languages (e.g. Type Script, Rust, Go, Python, or similar)
A product mindset — you care about how your team’s work impacts users and moves key metrics

Clear communication and organizational skills, with the ability to align engineering efforts with business goals

Experience working in distributed, remote-first teams

Nice to haves

Experience with analytics, performance/paid marketing, experimentation, or growth tooling

Background in developer experience, SDKs, or internal platforms

Exposure to scaling teams or processes during high-growth phases

How You Lead You lead by…