Position Overview

PayJoy is a mission-driven fintech company and Public Benefit Corporation committed to expanding financial inclusion for underserved consumers in emerging markets. Through ethical lending, transparent products, and innovative smartphone-based underwriting, PayJoy empowers millions to build credit, access essential technology, and achieve upward economic mobility.

As the Senior Director of Engineering – International Squad, you will be PayJoy’s founding engineering leader in India. Unlike other senior director roles at PayJoy that own a specific product domain, this role is intentionally cross-cutting. You will build and lead an international engineering squad that supports the full breadth of PayJoy’s product portfolio, drives platform reliability and operational excellence, and owns the technical delivery of region-specific product initiatives for Southeast Asia and Africa.

This is a greenfield opportunity. You will establish PayJoy’s India engineering presence from scratch — hiring the team, setting the culture, defining local processes, and integrating a new site into PayJoy’s established global engineering organization. The squad you build will contribute across Consumer products, Finance Engine, Lock platform, Payments, and Infrastructure, partnering closely with engineering and product leaders in the US, Mexico, and Colombia.

You will operate as a player-coach: deeply technical, strategically minded, and capable of recruiting and mentoring a high-performing team in a new geography. This role demands someone who thrives in ambiguity, can build organizational muscle from scratch, and is energized by the challenge of connecting a new site to an established global engineering culture.

This position is based in India (Bangalore, Mumbai, Chennai). It is a hybrid role with periodic travel to PayJoy’s offices in San Francisco and Mexico City.

Key Responsibilities

Build & Scale the India Engineering Team

- Serve as the founding engineering leader in India,



establishing the team from zero and scaling it over multiple quarters.
- Develop and execute a hiring roadmap to build capabilities across backend, frontend, mobile, infrastructure, and QA disciplines.
- Create a high-performance engineering culture rooted in ownership, velocity, and deep collaboration with global counterparts.
- Establish local engineering processes, onboarding programs, and career development frameworks.

Cross-Product Engineering Support

- Lead an international squad that contributes across all PayJoy product lines — Consumer, Lock, Finance Engine, Payments, and Infrastructure — rather than owning a single domain.
- Partner with product and engineering leaders in the US and Latin America to understand priorities, decompose work, and deliver high-quality contributions to the shared codebase.
- Drive architectural improvements and feature delivery across multiple services and platforms simultaneously.

System Reliability & Platform Resilience

- Own and improve the reliability posture of PayJoy’s production systems, including uptime, observability, incident response, and post-mortem culture.
- Establish SRE practices and on-call rotations that leverage the India time zone for improved global coverage.
- Drive infrastructure automation, performance optimization, and resilience engineering initiatives.
- Collaborate with security and compliance teams to ensure systems meet regional regulatory requirements.

Southeast Asia & Africa Product Delivery

- Own the technical execution of region-specific product features and integrations for Southeast Asia and Africa markets.




- Work closely with regional business teams to translate local market requirements — carrier integrations, payment rails, regulatory compliance — into engineering deliverables.
- Adapt PayJoy’s core platform to support market-specific needs including localization, regional payment methods, and partner APIs.
- Act as the engineering point of contact for regional stakeholders, ensuring timely delivery and technical feasibility assessments.

Strategic Leadership & Global Collaboration

- Represent India engineering in global planning, architecture reviews, and leadership forums.
- Align the India team’s roadmap with global company objectives and OKRs.
- Build strong cross-site communication practices to overcome time zone and cultural differences.
- Provide regular updates to executive leadership on team progress, capacity, and strategic recommendations.

Qualifications

- 16+ years of progressive software engineering experience, with at least 5 years in engineering leadership roles (Director or above).
- Proven track record of building engineering teams from the ground up in current geographies or greenfield offices.
- Deep technical expertise across the full stack (backend services, APIs, cloud infrastructure, databases, and front-end/mobile).
- Strong experience with platform reliability, SRE practices, incident management, and production operations at scale.
- Experience working with distributed, multi-time-zone engineering organizations.
- Demonstrated ability to operate in a cross-product or platform team model, contributing to multiple product lines simultaneously.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills; comfortable operating in high-growth, fast-changing environments.
- Fintech experience is strongly preferred.
- Familiarity with Southeast Asian and/or African technology ecosystems, mobile money, or mobile-first product development is a plus.
- Exposure to Android firmware, OEM integrations, or mobile device management is helpful but not required.

📌 Senior Director of Engineering (Bengaluru)
🏢 PayJoy
📍 Bengaluru