Engineering Manager - Verification at Sumup

SumUp builds financial solutions for millions of small businesses worldwide. Our Identity Lifecycle mission powers the systems that determine who can access those solutions, ensuring every merchant we onboard is verified accurately, compliantly, and at scale. As Engineering Manager for Verification, you will lead the squad responsible for identity checks across all of SumUp's markets. This is a high-impact opportunity to guide a team running high-stakes workstreams across KYC and a wide range of regulatory environments, in a domain that is both technically complex and central to the customer journey. You will help bring clarity, stability, and momentum to a complex domain, supporting the evolution of legacy-heavy systems into a platform that is increasingly observable, maintainable, and resilient in the face of a fast-changing regulatory landscape. The role calls for strong technical depth and sound engineering judgment, enabling you to lead delivery with confidence while shaping the architecture decisions that will define how verification works at SumUp for years to come. You will work closely with Product, Compliance, and Operations to ensure solutions are practical, safe, and scalable, with regulatory requirements considered early and effectively throughout the development process. At the same time, you will create the conditions for engineers to do their best work by providing direction, support, and space for ownership. Together, you will raise the bar for how verification systems are designed, built, and operated at SumUp. 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 the technical and organisational improvements that strengthen the squad over time, reducing legacy overhead, improving tooling, and fostering greater shared ownership and sustainable delivery practices. • Shape roadmap priorities alongside the PM, 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 with intention 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 modernisation. • You bring strong technical depth in backend technologies, particularly Go and API/integration architecture, and have hands-on experience with observability, CI/CD, and testing practices • You have experience (or a appetite to learn) in KYC/KYB regulatory environments and understand how frameworks like eIDAS interact with product and engineering decisions • You combine strategic thinking with hands-on technical credibility, and you communicate with clarity, empathy, and transparency across both technical and non-technical audiences • You are a solid people leader who develops high performers, addresses underperformance directly and fairly, and builds psychologically safe, inclusive, high-performing teams Why you should join SumUp 🌎 Opportunity to work with SumUppers globally on large-scale fintech products used by millions of businesses worldwide, from our Berlin office. This involves an office-first setup 🌈 Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion: be part of a workplace that values and promotes diversity, fostering an inclusive environment where everyone's perspectives are respected and embraced 🚀 Enrollment onto our Virtual Stock Option programme: you will own a stake in SumUp’s future success 📚 A dedicated annual L&D budget of €2000 for attending conferences and/or advancing your career through further education 💶 A corporate pension scheme where we match up to 20% of your contributions 🏖️ Generous time off: enjoy 28 days of paid leave plus public holidays and special leave days 🚵🏾‍♂️ Numerous other benefits such as Urban Sports Club subsidy, Kita placement assistance, subsidised office lunches 🌴 Break4me: 1-month sabbatical after 3 years of service 🔗 Referral Bonus: earn additional rewards by referring talented individuals to join the SumUp team About SumUp At SumUp, we’re on a mission to empower small businesses around the world with simple, affordable tools to help them start, run, and grow. More than 4 million merchants across 36 markets trust us as their financial partner — and we’re just getting started. We’re a global team of 3,000+ people 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. 👉 Explore more about our culture on our careers site, or follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram. Job Application Tip We recognise that candidates feel they need to meet 100% of the job criteria in order to apply for a job. Please note that this is only a guide. If you don’t tick every box, it’s ok too because it means you have room to learn and develop your career at SumUp.