Conditions:
- Salary: 10.000 azn
- Location: Remote (UTC+0 to UTC+4)
- Type: Full-time
About the Role:
We are hiring a Head of Engineering — the first engineering leader who will take full ownership of executing AlemX's technical strategy.
This is an execution-focused leadership role. Your mandate is to turn the existing architecture and team into a machine that consistently ships. You will remove operational engineering overhead from the CEO and uphold the quality, security, and delivery velocity that a fintech product handling real financial flows demands.
Responsibilities:
Engineering Delivery
- Full ownership of the roadmap and sprints: planning, prioritization, shipping
- Leading the current team and scaling it to 8-12 engineers over the next 12 months
- Establishing processes: code review, CI/CD, incident response, on-call rotation
- Weekly engineering reports to the CEO and board
Security & Compliance
- Closing critical findings from the recent technical audit
- Operational ownership of the SOC 2 Type I process alongside the Compliance Lead
- Security hygiene: secrets management, access control, dependency audits
Hiring & Team
- Screening, hiring, and onboarding new engineers
- Performance management, 1-on-1s, career development
- Shaping the engineering culture: accountability, ownership, code quality
Vendor & Partnerships
- Technical stewardship of relationships with infrastructure and payment partners
- Due diligence on new technical partners
Communication
- Representing engineering in investor conversations
- Aligning with product, compliance, marketing, and other functions
Requirements:
Must-have
- 8+ years in engineering, including 3+ years in a management role (Engineering Manager / Head of Engineering / VP)
- Experience leading teams of 5-15 engineers in a product company
- Shipping experience in fintech, payments, or a similarly regulated environment
- Strong operational discipline: processes, metrics, delivery predictability
- Readiness to operate in an early-stage startup: hands-on, no corporate comfort, multiple context switches per day
- Fluent English (written and spoken); Russian is a welcome bonus but not required
Nice-to-have:
- Experience passing SOC 2, PCI DSS, or similar audits
- Experience with mobile-first products built on React Native
- Experience with distributed / remote teams across different time zones
Personal Fit:
- Ownership mindset: you take a problem and drive it to completion rather than handing it off
- Low ego: comfortable operating within an already-established architecture rather than rewriting it to match your preferences
- Doer, not a slide-maker: your output is working product in production, not PowerPoint
- Communication: able to explain technical decisions to non-technical stakeholders (investors, legal, compliance)
What We Offer:
- Compensation: market-rate base salary (finalized after screening)
- Equity: meaningful equity package from the Employee Option Pool (4-year vesting, 1-year cliff)
- Impact: the #1 engineering role with a direct reporting line to the CEO and a seat at the table for all key decisions
- Ownership: full autonomy over engineering; you are the final authority on all technical processes
- Remote-first with periodic visits to Baku (team, offsites)
Hiring Process:
- Screening call (30 min, with CEO) — mutual introduction, fit check
- Technical deep dive (90 min, with CEO + Lead Developer) — architecture discussion, past projects, problem-solving
- Case study (async, 3-5 hours) — a practical scenario based on real AlemX engineering challenges
- Cultural + reference round (60 min + references) — final check
- Offer
The full process takes 2-3 weeks from the first call to an offer.
How to Apply:
Send a brief message to the e-mail address in the Apply for job button including:
- Why AlemX and why this role specifically
- The most significant engineering project you have led (stack, team size, outcome)
- A link to your LinkedIn / GitHub
- Your earliest possible start date
An NDA is signed before the technical deep dive. Architecture and product details are not disclosed without a signed NDA.