Remote opportunity at
GiveDirectlySenior Engineering Manager, Platform
GiveDirectly sends cash straight to people living in poverty and has delivered more than $1 billion to over two million recipients across 15 countries since 2011.…
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About This Role
GiveDirectly sends cash straight to people living in poverty and has delivered more than $1 billion to over two million recipients across 15 countries since 2011. In its view, cash transfers are a scalable, low-cost and respectful route to helping people, and it describes its internal culture as candid, analytical and non-hierarchical. This Senior Engineering Manager post is one of three roles that each take ownership of one area of…
Job Description
GiveDirectly sends cash straight to people living in poverty and has delivered more than $1 billion to over two million recipients across 15 countries since 2011. In its view, cash transfers are a scalable, low-cost and respectful route to helping people, and it describes its internal culture as candid, analytical and non-hierarchical.
This Senior Engineering Manager post is one of three roles that each take ownership of one area of the cash delivery system. The system was rebuilt from scratch and is being scaled toward roughly $5 billion a year. The manager leads one of three teams: payments, which covers mobile money and banking connections, payment orchestration and reconciliation; core platform, which covers the recipient and programme data model and the web application used by call centre and field staff; or data collection, which covers enrolment tools built for low-connectivity, offline use. Candidates are matched to a team during hiring, so there is no need to choose one in advance.
Day to day, the manager oversees five to seven senior engineers through one-to-one meetings, goal setting, performance reviews and recruiting, and coordinates with product leaders on the roadmap and how work gets delivered. The role owns on-call arrangements and incident response, and stays hands-on enough to question designs and weigh technical trade-offs. The position reports to the VP of Technology and involves roughly three or four trips a year to countries where the organisation operates.
Responsibilities
- Manage a team of five to seven senior engineers, including performance and career growth
- Lead recruiting and onboarding for several hires in the first year
- Answer for delivery, reliability and technical outcomes within one domain
- Work with product leaders to balance feature work, debt reduction and infrastructure investment
- Oversee on-call rotations, incident response, testing and deployment practice
- Explain technical trade-offs to leadership and turn them into business decisions
Requirements
- At least three years managing software engineers through complete delivery cycles
- Eight or more years in the software industry building production systems, with a strong backend background
- Record of hiring, coaching and retaining engineers during fast growth
- Confidence in testing architecture choices against highly experienced engineers
- Fluent English
- Living in an eligible country and able to share at least three hours with the East Africa and US Eastern time zones
- Able to travel three or four times a year
Qualifications
- Experience building a strong engineering culture with genuine product ownership
- Track record of partnering with stakeholders who lack technical backgrounds
- Personal or professional experience in low-income or historically marginalised communities is encouraged
Core Skills
Benefits
- Annual benefits stipend, usable for benefits or taken as taxable income (listed as US $21,393, GBP 2,760 or US $8,453 depending on country)
- Bonus target of 15 percent of base salary
Frequently Asked Questions
Answers are based only on the employer’s listing; where it doesn’t say, neither do we.
Is the role remote?
Yes, the role is fully remote. Candidates must live in one of the eligible countries and share at least three hours of overlap with the East Africa and US Eastern time zones.
Does GiveDirectly sponsor visas?
No. The posting says the organisation cannot sponsor or take over US or UK work visas at this time.
What is the base salary?
The posting lists a base salary of US $181,130 for the United States, GBP 124,370 for the United Kingdom and US $112,350 for Kenya, each with a 15 percent target bonus.
How much travel is involved?
Roughly three or four trips a year to operating countries, covering team retreats and field visits.
Sample Interview Questions
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