First Circle is a fast-growing, profitable, credit-led SME neobank in the Philippines, backed by shareholders including the World Bank Group (IFC). Thousands of SMEs use our Business Credit Line and Business Bank Accounts to run and grow their businesses. Our product velocity continues to accelerate, with upcoming launches including SME Corporate Cards, Payroll, Invoices, and Solar Financing - redefining the SME neobank category through software, financial products, and exceptional risk models.
Our culture emphasises building, problem solving, ownership / responsibility, and personal & professional growth. We balance a collegiate atmosphere with free & direct communication which enables us to move very quickly and avoid politics or toxicity. Our team continues to level up quickly, necessary for business to compound more than 100% per year, which we achieve through individual growth and bar-raiser hiring.
Stage:
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Profitable
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150% YoY growth
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$25-50m revenue
Responsibilities
As VP of Engineering, you will be the most senior technical leader in the business, reporting directly to the CEO. You will own engineering output end-to-end: from system design and domain architecture to delivery velocity, team culture, and the platform decisions that define the next chapters of our journey.
This is not a role for a detached engineering executive. We are looking for a technically excellent leader who understands that solving the hardest problems means being hands-on, not someone who manages through process and delegation. The ideal candidate raises the bar on every dimension of engineering quality, and builds the engineering organisation which will enable us to become the dominant SME NeoBank across Southeast Asia.
Product Velocity & Quality
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Evolve the engineering delivery framework - sprint cadence, definition of done, code review standards, and release processes
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Drive meaningful improvement in lead time, deployment frequency, and change failure rate (DORA metrics)
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Balance feature velocity against technical debt with rigour and transparency
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Partner with Product to co-own the technical roadmap, sequencing build decisions against architectural dependencies
Architecture & System Design
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Define and enforce domain boundaries across a microservices landscape, including cross-service messaging patterns, event contracts, and data consistency models
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Own data modelling standards and schema governance across services
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Lead design reviews for significant architectural decisions: ledger design, transaction state machines, reconciliation, and authorisation flows
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Build the architecture review process - lightweight enough to not slow teams down, rigorous enough to prevent expensive mistakes