Engineering Manager

Location: India

Branch Overview

Branch is a leading AI-powered lending fintech with 50M+ downloads across India and Africa. We use alternative data and machine learning to expand financial access for millions of people traditionally excluded from the formal financial system. Founded by the former CEO of Kiva.org and backed by leading investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Visa, and the IFC, Branch combines mission-driven impact with world-class technology and scale.

In India, Branch operates as a regulated digital lending institution and Middle Layer NBFC, building trusted and accessible financial products for millions of customers across the country. Our 250+ member India team is growing rapidly and works across technology, data science, risk, product, and operations to solve high-impact problems at scale.

Certified as a Great Place to Work in 2025, Branch offers the opportunity to build meaningful careers while shaping the future of inclusive fintech in one of the world's fastest-growing digital economies.

About Role

As an Engineering Manager, you will lead a small group of engineers that are working on a particular facet of our products and infrastructure across the stack. You will be working closely with other stakeholders to help us achieve our goals. You will also work closely with other leaders throughout the company to build the right organizational structures and processes as we continue to grow.

As a company, we are passionate about our customers, fearless in the face of barriers, and driven by data. As an engineering team, we value bottom-up innovation and decentralized decision-making:
We believe the best ideas can come from anyone in the company, and we are working hard to create an environment where everyone feels empowered to propose solutions to the challenges we face. We are looking for individuals who thrive in a fast-moving, innovative, and customer-focused setting.

Responsibilities

* Lead a team of engineers building and operating production systems, owning delivery, quality, and costs.

* Craft a thoughtful, long-term technical strategy in collaboration with your team and other company leaders that anticipates future needs while being pragmatic about what's needed today. Set direction and ambitious goals for your team, Engineering, and Branch as a whole.

* Drive the full delivery cycle: scoping, sequencing, estimation, execution, and post-launch ownership across one or more concurrent initiatives.

* Be accountable for engineering standards on your team: code review culture, testing discipline, observability, security posture, and responsible AI use.

* Recruit, grow, and empower driven engineers with high expectations around ownership, impact, and technical excellence.

* Help build a culture of collaboration that embodies our values:
Passionate about our customers. Fearless in the face of barriers. Driven by data.

* Be a hands-on technical contributor and mentor for your team. Not afraid to roll up your sleeves and do actual technical work when appropriate.

* Represent the team's work to the company through clear written updates, metrics, and well-run forums.

Qualifications

* 7+ years experience building production software, with about 2 years managing engineers directly (line management, not just tech lead).

* Track record of shipping non-trivial systems end to end in a planned and organized manner, and operating them in production at meaningful scale.

* Strong foundation in backend or full-stack development, distributed systems, and data modeling. Comfortable being the technical decision-maker for your team. Experience in non backend systems like AI or Mobile is a plus.

* Demonstrated fluency with modern AI-assisted development workflows and a point of view on their effectiveness for various use cases.

* Experience hiring engineers and building a team's bar over time, including making hard calls on performance.

* Clear, structured written and verbal communication, comfortable operating async effectively.

Core Engineering Expectations

The following describes the traits we expect in our engineering managers, and reflects instincts developed over years of shipping real software through teams. We do expect a…