Engineering Manager- Application Platform

About the company

OpenFX is a fintech infrastructure startup that provides a stablecoin-native network and API-based solutions for instant, 24/7 cross-border foreign exchange and payments.

About this role

<h3 class="mt-3 -mb-1 text-[1.125rem] font-bold">About Us</h3> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal">OpenFX is on a mission to move money as freely as data, unrestricted by time zones, banking hours, or legacy systems. We are building the infrastructure that will power the next generation of cross-border payment systems for institutions. The team's execution has been exceptional, and we're scaling at a remarkable pace. Our stellar early team comes with experience in companies like J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, FalconX, PayPal, Affirm, Polygon, Kraken, Nium &amp; others. We're backed by Accel, Lightspeed, NfX and other top-tier investors.</p> <h3 class="mt-3 -mb-1 text-[1.125rem] font-bold">Role Overview</h3> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal">OpenFX processes billions of dollars in transaction volume every month across global corridors. Application Platform owns the layer every other team builds on: the API gateway, authentication and session security, the admin surface, API standards and governance, identifiers, and the observability that makes production legible.</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal">This is where the company's constraints collide. Security requires strong customer authentication, mTLS, and session controls. Product teams need to ship weekly. Auditors and cyber insurers need access controls and evidence. Engineering needs deployment hygiene that does not silently drift. Today these get resolved case by case, in meetings, at the cost of speed.</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal">If we do not solve this well, every product team pays a tax in ambiguity, and one bad gateway or auth change becomes an outage on the money path.</p> <h3 class="mt-3 -mb-1 text-[1.125rem] font-bold">Key Responsibilities</h3> <ul class="[li_&amp;]:mb-0 [li_&amp;]:mt-1 [li_&amp;]:gap-1 [&amp;:not(:last-child)_ul]:pb-1 [&amp;:not(:last-child)_ol]:pb-1 list-disc flex flex-col gap-1 pl-8 mb-3 print:block print:space-y-1"> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Run the Application Platform pod of roughly 8 to 15 engineers and QA, with a Tech Lead reporting to you. You own the roadmap, the standards, and the on-call posture.</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Own the API gateway and edge: routing, plugins, rate limiting, mTLS and HMAC, and rollout strategy for changes sitting in front of production traffic with a rollback path that has actually been exercised.</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Own authentication and session security: strong customer authentication, re-authentication, new-device gating, session revocation, API key and credential management.</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Own API standards and governance: the standards document, the enforcement point, versioning conventions, identifier schemes, and a review process that stays real rather than aspirational.</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Make security review predictable: agree the interface with InfoSec so RFCs get scoped sign-off with named owners and dates, instead of open-ended review that stalls rollouts.</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Stay hands-on. You review designs, and you still write and ship code, debug production, and set the implementation bar by example, including the standard for AI-assisted development.</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Raise operational maturity: incident command and reporting, deployment and branch hygiene, delivery metrics that measure production reality, audit logging, and alerting that catches problems before customers do.</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Hire and grow the team: close open roles, grow your Tech Lead, run 30-60-90 ramps, keep on-call sustainable, and act on performance early.</li> </ul> <h3 class="mt-3 -mb-1 text-[1.125rem] font-bold">What We Are Looking For</h3> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal"><strong>Must-haves:</strong></p> <ul class="[li_&amp;]:mb-0 [li_&amp;]:mt-1 [li_&amp;]:gap-1 [&amp;:not(:last-child)_ul]:pb-1 [&amp;:not(:last-child)_ol]:pb-1 list-disc flex flex-col gap-1 pl-8 mb-3 print:block print:space-y-1"> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">EM-level scope: 2 or more years managing a full team of 5 or more, with a Tech Lead or senior IC reporting in, on top of a strong backend or infrastructure IC track record.</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Still writes code. You can design an API, model a schema, and produce idiomatic, runnable, tested code. Design fluency without hands-on ability is not enough at this level.</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Has owned a shared platform, gateway, or authentication system with internal teams as customers.</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Deep on API design, authentication, and distributed systems failure modes: blast radius, concurrency, idempotency.</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Has run a high-risk production migration or cutover with a rollback plan that was genuinely exercised.</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Owns on-call and incident command personally, not by delegation.</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Has worked directly with security or compliance and can negotiate scope rather than simply absorb requirements.</li> <li class="font-claude-response-body whitespace-normal break-words pl-2">Demonstrated hiring and performance