VP of Engineering

Location: Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Singapore, Singapore, Singapore, Belgrade, Vojvodina, Serbia

Department: GB department

Workplace: hybrid

Description

About Us

First Circle is a fast-growing, profitable, credit-led SME neobank in the Philippines, backed by shareholders including the World Bank Group (IFC). Thousands of SMEs use our Business Credit Line and Business Bank Accounts to run and grow their businesses. Our product velocity continues to accelerate, with upcoming launches including SME Corporate Cards, Payroll, Invoices, and Solar Financing - redefining the SME neobank category through software, financial products, and exceptional risk models.

Our culture emphasises building, problem solving, ownership / responsibility, and personal & professional growth. We balance a collegiate atmosphere with free & direct communication which enables us to move very quickly and avoid politics or toxicity. Our team continues to level up quickly, necessary for business to compound more than 100% per year, which we achieve through individual growth and bar-raiser hiring.

Stage:

• Profitable
• 150% YoY growth
• $25-50m revenue

Responsibilities

As VP of Engineering, you will be the most senior technical leader in the business, reporting directly to the CEO. You will own engineering output end-to-end: from system design and domain architecture to delivery velocity, team culture, and the platform decisions that define the next chapters of our journey.

This is not a role for a detached engineering executive. We are looking for a technically excellent leader who shapes architecture with their hands, raises the bar on every dimension of engineering quality, and builds the engineering organisation which will enable us to become the dominant SME NeoBank across Southeast Asia.

Product Velocity & Quality

• Evolve the engineering delivery framework - sprint cadence, definition of done, code review standards, and release processes
• Drive meaningful improvement in lead time, deployment frequency, and change failure rate (DORA metrics)
• Balance feature velocity against technical debt with rigour and transparency
• Partner with Product to co-own the technical roadmap, sequencing build decisions against architectural dependencies

Architecture & System Design

• Define and enforce domain boundaries across a microservices landscape, including cross-service messaging patterns, event contracts, and data consistency models
• Own data modelling standards and schema governance across services
• Lead design reviews for significant architectural decisions: ledger design, transaction state machines, reconciliation, and authorisation flows
• Build the architecture review process - lightweight enough to not slow teams down, rigorous enough to prevent expensive mistakes

Regulatory, Security & Non-Functional Requirements

• Own the technical implementation of MAS TRM Guidelines and/or HKMA SPM on IT
• Lead PCI-DSS compliance engineering and scope management
• Drive adoption of the Azure Well-Architected Framework across all workloads
• Define and maintain SLA/SLO frameworks, on-call rotation design, and post-mortem culture
• Own cloud cost governance, capacity planning, and tooling budget

AI in Engineering

• Evolve and implement out the firm's AI-assisted development strategy
• Stay close to the emerging agentic engineering landscape and make deliberate adoption decisions
• Provide architectural guidance on model integration, data pipelines, and inference infrastructure

API, Integration & Vendor Strategy

• Own the API design philosophy for internal and external-facing services
• Hold the technical relationship with key infrastructure partners - issuer processors, core banking providers, cloud vendors
• Define the integration pattern library and partner onboarding standards

Data Platform

• Accountability for data infrastructure: pipelines, warehouse, and models feeding BI and regulatory reporting
• Ensure data lineage, quality, and governance standards are fit for a regulated entity

Team Leadership & Hiring

• Hire, develop, lead & manage engineering team leaders: own the org design as the team scales from 25+ to 100+
• Drive hiring at all levels - define the bar, run structured processes, attract senior talent
• Develop engineering culture: ways of working, documentation standards, incident response norms
• Develop career pathways and performance frameworks oriented around A-players
• Represent engineering to the board, in investor due diligence, and in regulatory interactions

Requirements

• Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Mathematics, or a related discipline
• Deep expertise in building financial technology - payments, lending, cards, or core banking
• Experience managing one or more engineering teams
• Proven track record of solving hard technical problems personally
• Proven track record hiring and retaining strong engineers
• Strong communication in English; ability to translate technical complexity for exec/board audiences

Strong preference for:

• Deep familiarity with global fintech and/or Southeast Asia tech ecosystem
• Prior experience in a high-growth environment
• Hands-on Azure architecture experience
• Familiarity with card and payments infrastructure (issuer processors, scheme rules, clearing flows)
• Experience within a regulated entity or navigating a licensing process

Benefits

• Significant equity participation
• Competitive base salary
• Participate in annual leadership team outcome-based cash bonuses
• Direct line to the CEO and meaningful influence over company direction

A note on culture fit:

We are looking for someone who understands that seniority means solving the hardest problems, not someone who manages through process and delegation. We care about your judgement, problem solving, how you lead from the front. You have the highest standards, getting annoyed when engineering quality slips. If that description makes you nod, we'd like to talk.