Do you want to shape the technical foundation that powers employee benefits for millions of people across Europe?
Are you interested in joining one of Europe's fastest growing companies? Do you want to impact the wellbeing of millions of users?
If yes, join us to make an impact in a fast-paced and dynamic environment where you'll own the architecture and delivery of our Benefits domain, lead a growing engineering team, and directly enable Epassi's expansion into new markets.
About Epassi
Epassi's purpose is to boost everyday well-being. We are a leading provider of employee benefit solutions across Europe. We were established in Finland in 2007, and in 2008 we were the first company to launch a mobile-payable employee benefit payment solution in Europe. Since then, we have consistently grown, diversifying our products and introducing our services into new markets.
Epassi has been awarded by the Financial Times as one of the fastest-growing companies in Europe on multiple occasions.
Your mission at Epassi
As Senior Engineering Manager for Benefits, you own the technical direction, delivery, and reliability of the Benefits domain, the core of Epassi's multi-benefit architecture. This is a replacement hire at a growth inflection point: we are expanding into new markets and broadening our product offering, and the Benefits domain sits at the centre of that work. You report to the Director of Engineering and currently lead a team of four engineers, with a clear plan to grow to five or six by Q4. Your work shapes both what we ship and how we build, setting the engineering standard for one of the most business-critical parts of our platform.
Your responsibilities will be:
- Lead, mentor, and develop the Benefits engineers, removing blockers and creating the conditions for the team to do their best work.
- Drive execution of the Benefits roadmap with quality, on time, and in line with business objectives.
- Own the reliability and quality of Benefits services, including API contracts, SLAs, and documentation for consuming teams.
- Recruit strong engineers and build a diverse, inclusive team that meets or exceeds our hiring bar.
- Work with Product Managers, Staff Engineers, Principal Engineers, Quality Engineers, and DevOps Engineers on architectural decisions that scale.
- Set and maintain engineering and coding standards that grow with the team and the platform.
- Promote automation, CI/CD improvements, and AI-native development practices across and beyond the team.
You'll be successful in this role if you:
- Deliver support for new products and benefits across markets on the multi-benefit architecture, with measurable business impact.
- Grow the team to five or six engineers by Q4 by hiring people who meet or exceed the bar.
- Earn consistent positive feedback from Product partners and from the teams that depend on Benefits services.
- Hit committed quarterly goals with predictable sprint velocity, keeping rollover below 15% and surfacing risks early.
- Support at least one engineer promotion per year through regular, high-quality 1:1s and intentional development.
What you'll be doing (daily):
- Running team rituals, 1:1s, and planning sessions to keep the team focused, unblocked, and moving forward.
- Reviewing and prioritising work with Product Managers, negotiating scope and sequencing against the Benefits roadmap.
- Communicating progress, risks, and technical decisions to the Director of Engineering and relevant stakeholders.
- Reviewing architectural proposals and making decisions on API design, service reliability, and standards together with Staff and Principal Engineers.
- Conducting or coordinating code and design reviews to maintain quality and knowledge sharing across the team.
- Sourcing and interviewing engineering candidates, and supporting onboarding for new hires.
- Using and promoting AI-assisted development tools such as Copilot, Cursor, and Claude to speed up delivery.
What you should bring:
- 5+ years of hands-on software engineering experience with a strong backend background.
- 4+ years leading backend or platform engineering teams.
- Solid technical grounding in Java, Spring Boot, and microservices architecture.
- Practical experience with AWS, Kubernetes, Kafka, and PostgreSQL.
- Familiarity with service reliability, observability, and API governance.
- Experience in fintech and/or payments is a strong plus.
- A Bachelor's degree in Software Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field.
Your language profile:
Fluent English, written and spoken.
Your track record:
- You have hired, developed, and retained engineering talent while maintaining a high hiring bar.
- You have delivered complex backend or platform projects on time, managing risks and keeping stakeholders informed throughout.
- You have maintained service reliability and quality standards in a production environment, including API governance and SLA ownership.
- You have operated effectively in agile frameworks, with a track record of predictable sprint execution and early risk escalation.
Your competency profile:
- People leadership: You create the conditions for engineers to do their best work, develop their careers, and want to stay and grow with the team.
- Delivery discipline: You keep commitments visible, flag risks before they become problems, and guide the team to ship with quality and predictability.
- Technical credibility: You hold a strong enough engineering foundation to make sound architectural decisions, set meaningful standards, and earn the trust of senior engineers.
- Stakeholder communication: You build trusted relationships with Product and cross-functional partners, and keep them informed with clarity and candour.
- Continuous improvement: You make learning and process improvement a habit for the whole team, including adopting AI-native tools to raise the pace and quality of delivery.
- Architectural thinking: You make decisions that keep the platform clean, scalable, and ready to support new markets and benefit schemas without accumulating debt.
We're looking forward to hear from you, applications will be reviewed on ongoing basis.