Engineering Manager, Payments

Private markets are the new public markets. The most important companies of this era are private, and almost no one can own them. What's missing is the financial system public markets spent a century building: exchanges, custodians, brokers, and ways for ordinary people to buy in. Private markets, now $28T, never had the equivalent. AngelList is building it.

The last decade of structural innovation in venture happened here: syndicates, SPVs at scale, Rolling Funds, scout programs. Today we have $200B+ in assets and 30,000+ startups funded on our platform. The rest of private markets is next. Funds is the software and services behind private funds, Nova is the banking network, Meridian is the wealth platform for accredited investors, and USVC is the brand behind a registered fund that lets anyone invest in venture.

Working here means an unusual amount of agency on a problem that matters. Titles are closer to suggestions, and there are about 200 of us building what private markets never had. Come build it with us.

What You'll Do

Own the results of Nova Foundations, including the ledger, bank and payment integrations, KYC, and PII systems that everything at Nova depends on.
Grow the team from ~4 engineers to 5-7 and help stand up the planned split into two focused teams: money movement and risk and compliance.
Work closely with product managers, stakeholders, and the Product engineering teams to make progress against the roadmap.
Set a clear technical direction with the team's senior and staff engineers.
Keep the team shipping with urgency while maintaining high standards for correctness, auditability, security, and reliability.
Stay hands-on where it helps. Unblock the team and maintain enough technical context to ask good questions and make sound tradeoffs.

You Have

2+ years of engineering management experience, including hiring, developing, and getting the best work from engineers. We're open to a strong senior or lead engineer moving into management with a clear record of technical leadership. We'll also consider a more experienced manager with the right background.
Experience with fintech, payments, banking, ledgers, KYC or compliance systems, or another high-stakes domain. Direct experience with payments or financial systems is a strong plus given what this team owns.
A record of shipping and operating backend or platform systems where correctness and reliability are non-negotiable.
Experience with Ruby on Rails and service-oriented systems, or the ability to learn them quickly.
Good startup judgment. You're comfortable with ambiguity and add enough process to help the team without over-building it.

How Success Will Be Measured

You've learned the team's systems and can discuss the tradeoffs involved in money movement, bank integrations, and identity and KYC.
Money moves flawlessly, with a 0% transfer error rate, as weekly volume grows well beyond today's $100M+.
Foundations reliably delivers the platform for Nova's next launches, including distributions, LP wallets and identity, and capital calls, without becoming the bottleneck.
The team is healthy and growing. You've hired toward 5-7 engineers and set up the money movement and risk and compliance teams for success, with each team clear on its roadmap.