First Circle
First Circle
First Circle is a Philippine fintech company that helps small and medium-sized enterprises access practical financial services. Its offerings include business credit lines, business banking, and employee salary loans, with a focus on non-collateral funding that can support day-to-day operations and growth. Founded in 2016, the company works with rural banks and is regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission. First Circle reports serving more than 3,000 businesses across multiple industries through streamlined account opening and loan disbursement processes.

VP of Engineering - Hong Kong (Hybrid)

Lead architecture, security, delivery, and engineering growth at First Circle, a profitable Southeast Asian SME neobank. Scale the engineering organisation from 25+ to 100+ employees as the business expands across APAC markets.

Description

  • Serve as First Circle’s senior-most technical leader and report directly to the CEO
  • Own engineering performance across architecture, delivery, culture, and platform strategy
  • Grow the engineering organisation from 25+ to 100+, covering organisational design, hiring standards, career paths, and performance systems
  • Recruit, mentor, and develop high-performing engineering leaders
  • Define service boundaries, data-modelling standards, and microservice integration patterns
  • Guide technical decisions for ledgers, transaction states, reconciliation, and authorisation
  • Use DORA metrics to improve engineering speed and quality
  • Manage the trade-offs between product delivery and technical debt
  • Develop the technical roadmap jointly with Product
  • Lead technology-related regulatory and licensing work across markets, including technology risk, outsourcing, data rules, and PCI-DSS
  • Own the Azure platform, cloud expenditure, data infrastructure, and AI-supported engineering strategy
  • Oversee technical partnerships with issuer processors, core banking providers, and other key vendors
  • Represent engineering with the board, investors, and regulators

Requirements

  • At least 7 years of software engineering experience, including 4 or more years leading multiple teams through substantial growth
  • Extensive experience developing financial technology across areas such as payments, lending, cards, or core banking
  • Demonstrated ability to personally solve complex technical challenges rather than relying exclusively on delegation
  • Proven success hiring and retaining outstanding engineers
  • Ability to communicate technical complexity clearly to executives, board members, and regulators
  • Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field
  • Deep knowledge of global fintech and/or the Southeast Asian technology ecosystem is strongly preferred
  • Experience working in a high-growth environment is strongly preferred
  • Hands-on experience designing Azure architectures is strongly preferred
  • Familiarity with card and payments infrastructure, including issuer processors, scheme rules, and clearing flows, is strongly preferred
  • Experience working within a regulated organisation or supporting a licensing process is strongly preferred

Benefits

  • Competitive base pay, performance-based bonuses, and substantial equity participation
  • A high-impact position with meaningful influence over the company’s direction
  • Remote-work flexibility with opportunities to travel
  • MacBooks
  • Health insurance
  • Training budget

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