Who We Are

Bankjoy is a Y Combinator and Bessemer Venture Partner backed FinTech startup. We are changing the way community banks and credit unions do business, enabling them to become tech-driven and digital first. Bankjoy provides modern digital banking products including mobile banking, online banking, online account opening, loan origination, and conversational AI. Our mission is to revolutionize banking tech infrastructure by leading digital transformation at financial institutions — big and small. The Role We are looking for a

VP of System Engineering

to own three of Bankjoy's most critical engineering functions:

Release Management, QA, and DevOps , and to build the quality engineering framework that raises the bar across the entire engineering organization. This is a

hands-on leadership role

at a critical inflection point in Bankjoy's growth. You will directly lead Release Management, a QA organization including a QA Lead and automation engineers, and a DevOps team including a Senior Platform Architect and DevOps Engineer. You will also maintain a

dotted-line relationship with manual QA engineers

embedded across engineering value streams, setting quality standards and ensuring consistent practices, while those engineers report directly to their respective tech leads. The ideal candidate has

deep roots in quality engineering and platform reliability , has personally built or rebuilt automation programs in multi-platform environments, and has the organizational credibility to drive a cultural shift from manual-heavy to automation-first quality practices. You know what it takes to deliver reliable, compliant software to regulated financial institutions, and you build systems that make quality visible, not judgment-based. What You'll Do Engineering Leadership Lead three core engineering functions ( Release Management, QA, and DevOps ), owning delivery quality, release discipline, and platform reliability across Bankjoy's engineering organization

Maintain a

dotted-line relationship with manual QA engineers

embedded across product engineering value streams, setting quality standards and processes org-wide while coordinating with tech leads on day-to-day priorities

Provide hands-on technical leadership, engaging directly with your team on solution design, architecture decisions, production incident response, and complex troubleshooting

Partner closely with the VP of Engineering on cross-cutting initiatives including AI coding adoption, architectural standards, and release coordination

Participate in senior leadership alongside the COO, VP of Engineering, and product leadership

Quality Framework: Entire Engineering Organization Design and implement Bankjoy's

engineering quality framework

across all value streams, setting standards for unit testing, integration testing, automated regression, and release readiness

Own a modern

multi-platform automation framework

covering Angular, Swift, and Kotlin

Define and enforce

quality gates : explicit go/no-go release criteria that every value stream must meet,



including automated coverage thresholds, defect standards, and QE sign-off

Develop and coach the QA organization, elevating the team from manual QA toward a

quality engineering model

with automation-first practices

Establish

test data management, environment parity standards, and CI/CD quality integration

across all value streams

Build a

quality dashboard

visible to engineering and leadership (automation coverage, open defect counts, regression completion rates) so release readiness is transparent, not judgment-based

Release Quality & Cross-Functional Collaboration Partner with the Release Manager to implement a

structured release gate process : mid-cycle readiness reviews and formal go/no-go decisions with explicit sign-offs from engineering, QA, and product

Work closely with

Technical Support

to close the feedback loop between production issues and engineering prioritization, ensuring client-impacting defects drive process changes, not just fixes

Own

post-release retrospectives

for every release that generates client impact, extracting systemic lessons and driving specific process changes with named owners and deadlines

Partner with product leadership to enforce

scope freeze discipline

and ensure QA is involved in sprint planning and story grooming, not just at sprint end

DevOps & Platform Reliability Lead DevOps strategy, owning

CI/CD pipelines, cloud infrastructure, monitoring, alerting, and platform reliability

in partnership with Michael and Jason

Drive platform observability, ensuring engineering and leadership have real-time visibility into system health, deployment frequency, change failure rate, and MTTR

Oversee

Site Reliability Engineering

practices, building toward a future SRE function as Bankjoy scales

Ensure infrastructure and deployment practices meet

security, compliance, and uptime standards

required by regulated financial institution clients

AI-Driven Engineering Culture Champion

AI-assisted coding and testing adoption

across your teams, working alongside the VP of Engineering on the org-wide AI initiative

Embed AI productivity into engineering performance criteria: adoption, output velocity, code quality with AI, and knowledge sharing

Ensure AI tools are used in

QA as well as development : AI-assisted test generation, automated test maintenance, and prompt-driven regression coverage

What You Bring 10+ years of engineering experience

with at least 4 years in engineering leadership, managing QA, DevOps, or platform reliability teams

Deep background in quality engineering ; you have personally built or rebuilt automation frameworks,



not just overseen them from a distance

Proven experience

migrating automation frameworks in a multi-platform environment

(web and native mobile, iOS and Android)

Demonstrated success

driving a cultural shift from manual-heavy to automation-first QA

in a fintech, banking, or similarly regulated setting

Experience implementing

release gate processes

and enforcing go/no-go decisions under schedule pressure; you have called a no-go and held the line

Hands-on experience with modern automation tooling:

Playwright, Cypress, Appium, Maestro , or equivalent; familiarity with Angular, Swift, and Kotlin environments is a strong advantage

Strong

DevOps and platform reliability

background: CI/CD pipelines, cloud infrastructure (AWS preferred), monitoring, and observability

Experience driving

AI coding and testing tool adoption

across engineering teams: changed culture and productivity, not just personal usage

Strong technical depth, able to engage directly in solution design, architecture discussions, production incident response, and root-cause analysis

Strong

cross-functional credibility ; you have worked closely with technical support, release management, and product to solve systemic quality problems

Excellent communication and organizational influence; you can hold senior stakeholders accountable to quality standards without relying on hierarchy

Nice to Have Experience in

fintech, core banking, or digital banking

platforms

Familiarity with

credit union or community bank

client environments

Experience with

SOC 2 Type II, PCI DSS , or similar regulatory compliance contexts

Background working with multi-platform products serving both financial institutions and end consumers

Experience managing QA teams through a transition from

manual QA to quality engineering

roles

Experience building or managing an

SRE function

from scratch

What You Get

A fast-paced and collaborative environment

Competitive compensation

Stock options at a well-funded startup

We cover 100% of medical, dental, and vision premiums for individuals on our base plan, with significant contributions toward all other plan options (USA).

We cover 100% of extended medical, dental, and vision premiums for you and your family under our single, comprehensive plan (Canada).

Retirement plan with 4% company matching

8 weeks paid parental leave for birthing parents, 4 weeks for non-birthing

3-5 weeks PTO depending on tenure

5 health days

15 holidays

End of year shutdown

Performance-based bonuses

Remote first culture

Equal Employment Opportunities at Bankjoy

Bankjoy is committed to hiring talented and qualified individuals with diverse backgrounds for all of its tech, non-tech, and leadership roles. Bankjoy provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age or disability.

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📌 VP of Systems Engineering - Canada (Winnipeg)
🏢 BankJoy
📍 Winnipeg