Engineering Manager, Verification

About SumUp:
SumUp empowers millions of small businesses worldwide with simple, affordable financial tools. Our Identity Lifecycle mission ensures merchants are verified accurately, compliantly, and at scale, powering access to our solutions.

We are a global team of over 3,000 professionals from more than 90 nationalities, united by curiosity, collaboration, and care. Our core values and culture foster inclusion, learning, and belonging.

The Role:
As the Engineering Manager for Verification, you will lead the squad responsible for identity checks across all of SumUp's markets. This is a high-impact role guiding a team that manages critical workstreams in KYC and various regulatory environments. You will bring clarity, stability, and momentum to a technically complex domain central to the customer journey. Your leadership will support the evolution of legacy systems into a platform that is observable, maintainable, and resilient amidst a fast-changing regulatory landscape.

This position requires strong technical depth and sound engineering judgment to lead delivery confidently and shape architectural decisions for SumUp's verification systems.

You will collaborate closely with Product, Compliance, and Operations to ensure solutions are practical, safe, and scalable, integrating regulatory requirements early in the development process. You will also foster an environment where engineers can do their best work by providing direction, support, and ownership.

What You'll Do:

• Lead the Verification Squad as its engineering leader, creating focus and momentum by removing bottlenecks, managing cross-team dependencies, and helping engineers navigate complexity across legacy systems and evolving processes.
• Partner closely with Product, Compliance, and Operations to translate complex cross-market KYC and KYB requirements into clear engineering outcomes, identifying buildability considerations and regulatory risks early.
• Drive technical and organizational improvements to strengthen the squad over time, reducing legacy overhead, improving tooling, and fostering greater shared ownership and sustainable delivery practices.
• Shape roadmap priorities alongside the Product Manager, ensuring trade-offs are well understood and that compliance requirements and AI-influenced features are properly accounted for.
• Maintain high standards for how verification systems are built and operated, ensuring flows are observable, failures are controlled, and AI-driven components meet the same bar for reliability, traceability, and auditability as any other part of the system.
• Develop engineers intentionally through regular 1:1s, direct feedback, and deliberate stretch opportunities, building a team with strong technical and product judgment.

You'll Be Great for This Role If You Have:

• A proven track record of leading engineering teams through technical transformation, including large-scale migrations and legacy modernization.
• Strong technical depth in backend technologies, particularly Go and API/integration architecture, with hands-on experience in observability, CI/CD, and testing practices.
• Experience (or a strong appetite to learn) in KYC/KYB regulatory environments and an understanding of how frameworks like eIDAS interact with product and engineering decisions.
• The ability to combine strategic thinking with hands-on technical credibility, communicating with clarity, empathy, and transparency across technical and non-technical audiences.
• Solid people leadership skills, including developing high performers, addressing underperformance directly and fairly, and building psychologically safe, inclusive, high-performing teams.

Why You Should Join SumUp:

• Global Impact: Work with SumUppers worldwide on large-scale fintech products used by millions of businesses.
• Office-First Setup: Based in our Berlin office.
• Diversity & Inclusion: Be part of a workplace that values and promotes diversity, fostering an inclusive environment.
• Virtual Stock Option Program: Own a stake in SumUp's future success.
• Learning & Development: A dedicated annual L&D budget of €2000 for conferences and education.
• Pension Scheme: Corporate pension scheme with up to 20% employer contribution.
• Generous Time Off: 28 days of paid leave plus public holidays and special leave days.
• Additional Benefits: Urban Sports Club subsidy, Kita placement assistance, subsidized office lunches.
• Sabbatical: 1-month sabbatical after 3 years of service (Break4me).
• Referral Bonus: Earn rewards for referring talented individuals.

About SumUp:
At SumUp, we empower small businesses globally with simple, affordable tools. Over 4 million merchants trust us as their financial partner. We are a global team of 3,000+ from over 90 nationalities, united by curiosity, collaboration, and care. Our core values and culture shape everything we do, fostering inclusion, learning, and belonging.

SumUp is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer, committed to building a safe, respectful, and diverse workplace where everyone can thrive.

Job Application Tip:
We encourage all candidates to apply, even if you don't meet 100% of the job criteria. We value potential and passion.