VP of Engineering

At January, we're transforming the lives of consumers by bringing humanity to consumer finance. Our data-driven products help financial institutions streamline their collections, offering borrowers straightforward and compassionate solutions to regain financial stability and control over their lives. We're not just expanding access to credit – we're restoring dignity and giving millions of people the chance to achieve financial freedom.

About the Role

As VP of Engineering at January, you’ll lead our engineering team to new heights. You’ll bring a bold, ambitious approach that enhances our technical strategy, advancing our product vision and creating lasting value for both our creditor clients and consumers. Through your leadership, you’ll inspire the organization to aim higher, iterate quickly, and prioritize ruthlessly, evolving a culture that moves from strong execution to proactive, forward-thinking engineering. You’ll champion continuous improvement, technical rigor, innovation, and adaptability, keeping us focused on building with purpose and speed.

This role is perfect for a strategic engineering leader who thrives in high-growth environments and embraces the challenge of building and shaping teams while setting new standards in technical and product excellence. With an eye on sustainable growth, you’ll build on our strengths and set a technical vision that powers innovation today and positions us for long-term success. As January scales, your impact will grow, evolving to shape our technical strategy across new products, markets, and customer segments.

What You’ll Work On

• Set an Ambitious Technical Vision: Lead engineering with a clear and ambitious vision. Raise the bar for product-market alignment and keep the team innovating at full speed. Champion AI as a core driver of January’s growth, actively investing in initiatives that sharpen our technical edge and bring transformative impact to our products and customer experience. Work across departments to ensure engineering drives January’s long-term goals.

• Deliver Fast, High-Quality Results: Build systems that move fast without cutting corners. Shift the team from reactive fixes to proactive, bold leadership. Create processes that keep us moving forward and compliant.

• Prioritize What Matters Most: Shape a culture where only the highest priorities take focus. Direct resources to the projects that count. Keep the team agile, effective, and sharply aligned.

• Build a High-Performing Team: Hire and develop top talent, raising the bar with every new addition. Create a culture where engineers thrive on challenge, drive rapid iteration, and grow into leaders.

• Align Engineering with Market and Product Goals: Ensure engineering aligns with January’s broader strategy and adapts as the market shifts. Use your insights to shape our product’s direction, keeping us competitive and customer-focused.

• Create Lasting Impact for Clients and Consumers: Develop products that deliver standout financial results and risk mitigation for creditors, while offering stability and compassion to consumers. Lead in a way that transforms every side of the financial journey.

• Optimize the Product Development Lifecycle: Partner with Product to make development faster, clearer, and more collaborative. Establish frameworks that keep the team efficient and resilient as January scales.

• Build a Scalable, Resilient Engineering Culture: Set up practices that drive accountability, speed, and continuous improvement. Lay the groundwork for growth, sustainability, and adaptability.

What You Bring to the Table

• 15+ years in engineering, with at least 7 years in senior engineering leadership roles within high-growth tech environments that demand speed, technical rigor, and adaptability.

• Proven success in scaling engineering teams, ideally within a startup, with experience growing an engineering organization from ~30 to over 100+. Demonstrated ability to establish systems that support rapid iteration, quality, and resilience as the team expands.

• Strong technical expertise in modern engineering practices and technologies, balancing product velocity with technical excellence to achieve high-impact results.

• Gifted in product strategy: Uses technical insight to shape and elevate product vision, aligning engineering priorities with broader market and customer needs to create a competitive edge.

• Experience aligning engineering objectives with business and market needs, using technical strategy to inform and amplify the company’s product and market positioning.

• Exceptional cross-functional leadership skills, with a track record of collaboration with Product, Sales, and Compliance