Engineering Manager, Growth Foundations at Payward (Kraken)

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.

• Maintain clear expectations, realistic estimates, and transparent communication with stakeholders to keep projects moving forward.

• 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

• 5+ years of experience leading engineering teams and delivering high-quality results in a collaborative environment.

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

• A 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., TypeScript, 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 setting context, not control—empowering engineers to make decisions with clarity and confidence.

• You coach through curiosity, helping others grow their judgment and autonomy.

• You communicate transparently, ensuring alignment across engineering, product, and design.

• You model accountability and empathy, creating an environment of trust and shared purpose.

How We Work

We give engineers ownership and trust them to ship high-impact work with craftsmanship and accountability. We move quickly, experiment often, and learn continuously from data and user feedback. We build acquisition and engagement experiences that are fast, resilient, and measurable. We collaborate asynchronously across time zones, connected by clear communication and shared goals.