VP of Engineering
Forward is seeking a VP of Engineering to own technical direction, delivery, and culture, scaling the team from ~10 to 50+ engineers. This hands-on leadership role requires deep technical expertise in TypeScript, Next.js, Kafka, and AWS, with a focus on fintech infrastructure and AI agentic systems.
Responsibilities
- Lead the engineering organization, building and developing a high-performing team of senior engineers and engineering managers.
- Own delivery by establishing systems, rituals, and accountability for predictable, high-quality shipping.
- Set technical direction in partnership with founders and senior engineers on architecture and platform investments.
- Drive agentic AI strategy to identify and implement AI agents that improve product and operations.
- Partner across business functions to decide what to build, when to ship, and how to position it.
About the role
About The Role As VP of Engineering, you own the technical direction, delivery, and culture of the engineering organization. You’ll partner closely with the founders on company strategy, with product on what we build, and with customers on what we ship.
Your job is to scale the team, sharpen execution, and ensure we continue to ship quickly without compromising on the things that matter (especially when money is involved). This is a hands-on leadership role. You’ll be in architecture discussions, involved in critical code reviews, and present for the hardest technical and product decisions.
We are not looking for a pure people manager who has stepped away from the work. What You’ll Do Lead the organization Build, manage, and develop a high-performing team of senior engineers and engineering managers. Set a high bar for hiring, performance, and engineering quality. Own delivery Establish the systems, rituals, and accountability needed to ship predictably and at high quality.
Set technical direction Partner with founders and senior engineers on architecture, platform investments, and key build vs. buy decisions. Drive our agentic AI strategy Identify where AI agents meaningfully improve our product and operations—and turn those ideas into production systems. Build and scale a high-talent team Own talent density.
Attract, close, and retain exceptional engineers, and ensure every hire raises the bar. Be directly involved in senior hiring and act as a final decision-maker when needed. Design the org, leveling, and onboarding systems that let us scale quickly without compromising quality—and address underperformance decisively.
Partner across the business Work closely with product, design, and go-to-market to decide what to build, when to ship, and how to position it. Raise the operational bar Own reliability, security, observability, on-call, and incident response. We move money—our standards are high by default. Run the organization on metrics Define and own the metrics that matter across product, platform, and team.
Build the dashboards and feedback loops that make performance visible—and use them to drive prioritization, accountability, and decision-making at every level.
js, modern Node runtimes (Bun/Hono), Kafka, and AWS-based infrastructure Clear thinking and hands-on experience with AI-native systems, or a well-developed perspective on how to apply agentic AI effectively Excellent communication—you can align engineers, executives, and customers around complex tradeoffs Strong bias toward shipping—measured by real systems in production, not plans Strong data fluency—you don’t rely on intuition alone.
About forward
Visit getfwd.com for more.