
Engineering Manager, Issuing
Lithic is the modern card issuing and processing platform empowering ambitious financial companies to build the future of payments.
Our infrastructure powers card programs for 100+ innovative clients, from fintechs reimagining credit and digital banking to platforms transforming disbursements and spend management. Companies like Mercury, Flex, and Novo rely on Lithic's developer-friendly APIs, direct network connections, and flawless reconciliation to launch and scale card programs in weeks, not years.
We're building a future where access to better financial products materially improves people's lives, free from the constraints of 30-year-old mainframes and legacy processors. We're proud to be backed by world-class investors who share that vision, including Bessemer Venture Partners, Index Ventures, Spark Capital, Stripes, and Mastercard, along with many others.
We're a team of 160+ across 26 states and 7 countries, headquartered in New York City.
We are hiring an Engineering Manager for our Issuing team to lead Lithic’s next phase of growth.
The Issuing team is responsible for getting a card into an end user’s literal and figurative hand or wallet. We own core parts of the card and account lifecycle, including KYC/KYB flows for account holders, card issuance (physical and virtual), tokenization for digital wallets, and the data models and APIs that power these experiences. This team owns some of our most critical customer facing paths at the heart of our offering.
The systems we maintain have high standards of reliability and correctness, because they sit on the critical path for customers launching and operating card programs. The team primarily uses Python, Rust, and AWS, and interfaces with a broader service ecosystem across Lithic.
What You'll Do:
- Ensure high reliability and correctness for the Issuing surface area, including APIs and services powering core card and account lifecycle flows
- Lead delivery of new features and improvements across card issuance (physical + virtual), onboarding (KYB/KYC), and tokenization-related capabilities
- Raise the bar on operational excellence: observability, incident response, on-call readiness, and pragmatic reliability improvements
- Own initiatives from planning to launch, keeping stakeholders informed and aligned along the way
- Partner closely with Product and cross-functional stakeholders to clarify requirements early and keep engineering time focused on the highest-impact work
- Lead efforts to improve systems, processes, and documentation so new team members can ramp quickly
- Participate in and help evolve the team’s on-call rotation
What You Bring
- Experience managing and growing engineers, including coaching, feedback, and hiring
- Strong technical judgment and system design skills, especially for API-driven, high-reliability distributed systems
- Comfort staying close to the work. This is a player-coach role where the manager can unblock, review designs, and occasionally contribute hands-on when needed
- Experience shipping and operating production services, with a bias toward measurable reliability and pragmatic iteration
- Experience with or interest in learning the Issuing domain (cards, KYC/KYB, tokenization) and the realities of operating critical-path systems
- Experience with Python and AWS (or closely related stacks), and an ability to ramp quickly where the stack is unfamiliar
- Strong cross-functional communication skills and an ability to keep teams aligned under time pressure
- Growth mindset and continuous desire to learn and improve
- An interest in fintech and payments is preferred
The annual US salary range for this role is $169,000 - $265,000 plus equity. This salary range is inclusive of several career levels at Lithic and will be narrowed during the interview process based on the candidate’s experience and qualifications.
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Benefits for Full-Time US Employees:
- Unlimited PTO
- 12-weeks fully paid parental leave
- 4-Week Fully Paid Sabbatical (earned at your 5-year anniversary)
- Work From Anywhere: work from anywhere in the world 4-weeks each year
- 3% cashback on card purchases with your complimentary Privacy.com employee account
- Health, vision, and dental insurance; HSA Contribution Match
- 401(k) match
- Voluntary Life Insurance and STD/LTD
NYC-based employees work from our SoHo office three days a week. Tuesdays and Thursdays are our core days, and you'll choose a third day that works for your schedule and team needs.
In-office employees receive:
- Commuter benefit
- Catered lunch every Tuesday and Thursday
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