Head of Engineering

Job title: Head of Engineering

Role Overview

Coinflow is seeking a Head of Engineering to lead our engineering team and take ownership of day-to-day engineering, including prioritization, delivery, technical direction, and team health, that currently runs through the CTO. Coinflow is white-label payments infrastructure: card acquiring, payin/payout across numerous methods, hosted and embedded checkout, and merchant onboarding, operating in a heavily regulated environment where the bar for correctness, security, and reliability is high and non-negotiable.

This is a player-coach role, not a hands-off management job. You'll be in the codebase shipping real work on critical payment paths while building and leading the team. You own the team's deliverables — when something is late, broken, or unclear, it's yours to drive to done.

The first 6-12 months: this role is built around a handoff. Early on, you'll work closely with the CTO and ship alongside the team to earn context and trust. As you prove out judgment and delivery, more of the day-to-day — planning, technical decisions, team ownership — shifts to you. Success looks like the team running confidently under you while the CTO steps back from operational engineering.

Key Responsibilities

• In the trenches (player)

• Write, review, and ship production code on critical payment paths — you stay hands-on

• Debug the hard stuff: production incidents, reliability gaps, performance and correctness issues

• Set the technical direction and make the architecture calls that matter

• Raise the engineering bar through code review, standards, and example

• Leading the team (coach)

• Own delivery — break work down, sequence it, and make sure it lands

• Mentor every engineer on the team, from senior to junior, leveling people up rather than just directing them

• Manage and grow the engineers: 1:1s, feedback, performance, hiring, and the occasional hard conversation

• Own the process — clear requirements before work hits engineering, real ownership per project (DRI), and a feedback loop that catches problems early

• Be the point of accountability for the team's output to the founders

• Report to the CTO on personnel matters — performance, team health, and people decisions run through you and surface to the CTO directly

• Required Qualifications

• Senior engineering leader who is still a strong, current IC — able to hold your own in the codebase, not just review it

• Track record owning delivery for a team: shipping real product, on a real cadence, with real accountability

• Experience building process without bureaucracy — you know the difference between rigor and overhead

• Comfortable in our stack: TypeScript/Node (Express, React), MongoDB, ClickHouse, Redis/queues

• High bar for reliability, security, and correctness — you've operated where mistakes cost money

• Direct communicator — you write things down and don't hide bad news

• Preferred Qualifications

• Payments experience (acquiring, card networks, ACH, chargebacks, PCI)

• Stablecoin or blockchain infrastructure experience (Solana programs, EVM smart contracts, on-chain settlement)

• Experience working in a regulated, compliance-forward environment

• Early-stage startup experience

What We Offer

• Competitive compensation including base salary, performance bonus, and meaningful ownership
• Opportunity to own engineering delivery and team leadership at a rapidly scaling fintech company
• Collaborative and innovative work environment with world-class investors
• Direct impact on core product and company trajectory during a hyper growth phase
• The base salary range for this role is $220,000 - $275,000 USD. The actual base salary offered depends on a variety of factors, including but not limited to experience, education, skills, qualifications and business needs.
• In addition, the employee who fills this role will be eligible for an equity grant, allowing you to share in the long-term success of the company. You will also have access to a wide array of benefits, including health and wellness benefits, 401(k) savings plan, and flexible time off.

Join the team rewriting how money moves worldwide—and become a driving force in the $194 trillion cross-border payments market.

Location: Chicago, IL, USA