Engineering Manager, Smart Signals

This position is posted by Jobgether on behalf of a partner company. We are currently looking for a Engineering Manager, Smart Signals in South Africa.

This role sits at the core of a fraud detection and device intelligence platform, leading the engineering efforts behind critical “Smart Signals” that help detect bots, tampering, and fraudulent behavior in real time. You will manage a high-impact backend engineering team responsible for building and evolving signals that directly influence product trust, security, and revenue outcomes. The environment is fast-paced, highly technical, and deeply collaborative, requiring strong alignment with ML, product, and research functions. You will balance hands-on technical credibility with people leadership, ensuring the team delivers reliable, scalable, and high-quality detection systems. This position plays a strategic role in shaping how fraud signals evolve in response to emerging AI-driven threats. Your work will directly contribute to the company’s core differentiation in the market.

• Lead and grow a backend engineering team, managing hiring, performance reviews, career development, and technical mentorship with a strong focus on engineering excellence.
• Own sprint planning, roadmap execution, and delivery outcomes, ensuring the team consistently ships high-quality fraud detection signals on time.
• Oversee the development of scalable backend systems powering bot detection, fraud scoring, and device intelligence signals.
• Maintain technical depth to review architecture decisions, evaluate design proposals, and proactively identify system risks before production incidents occur.
• Collaborate closely with ML engineers and data teams to support signal pipelines, model deployment, and production integration.
• Drive cross-functional alignment with product managers and engineering leadership to prioritize roadmap initiatives and manage dependencies.
• Lead incident response processes, retrospectives, and operational discipline, ensuring reliability and continuous improvement.

Requirements:

• 4+ years of engineering management experience leading teams of approximately 8–10 engineers, including hiring, performance management, and career development.
• Strong technical background in backend or distributed systems at scale, with the ability to review code and evaluate architectural decisions.
• Proven track record of delivering complex engineering projects with measurable outcomes, including reliability, performance, or delivery improvements.
• Experience working cross-functionally with product managers, data teams, or research/ML partners to translate requirements into technical execution plans.
• Strong understanding of production system delivery, including sprint planning, incident management, and operational excellence.
• Ability to balance technical depth with leadership responsibilities in a fast-moving environment.
• Nice to have: exposure to fraud detection, security signals, or device intelligence systems.
• Nice to have: experience working with ML systems in production or real-time/latency-sensitive backend systems.

Benefits:

• Competitive compensation aligned with senior engineering leadership roles.
• Fully remote, globally distributed work environment.
• Opportunity to lead high-impact systems directly tied to product differentiation and revenue.
• Strong technical ownership and influence over architecture and engineering direction.
• Work on cutting-edge fraud detection and AI-driven security challenges.
• Collaborative engineering culture with high autonomy and responsibility.
• Exposure to advanced ML, security, and real-time data systems.