Head of Engineering

Head of Engineering

Company: Niva
Location: New York, NY (in office 5 days per week strongly preferred)
Compensation: $250,000 - $300,000 + up to 5% equity
Employment Type: Full-time
Visa Sponsorship: Visa transfers (OPT, H-1B transfer)

About Niva

Niva uses modern AI to build a universal identity layer that lets businesses verify and trust each other across borders: instant, reliable business verification (KYB) for banks, fintechs and marketplaces. Customers include Mercado Libre, Uber and Revolut.

Founded in 2023, Niva has about 13 people in New York and has raised a $9M seed from Kaszek, Gradient (Google's AI fund), Picus Capital, Canary and Gilgamesh.

The Role

Niva is hiring a Head of Engineering (5-10 years) to own engineering as a hands-on technical leader, spending roughly half your time writing production code and half leading, scaling and setting direction for the team. This foundational leadership role works closely with the CEO, has a clear path to CTO, and calls for strong B2B enterprise instincts and the product sense to shape what gets built, not just how.

What You Will Do

• Lead and scale engineering: set the hiring bar and build a high-talent-density team.
• Stay hands-on, shipping production code alongside your engineers.
• Own the company's AI strategy, building multi-agent systems that autonomously verify business identity data worldwide.
• Contribute to product direction and UX as a key member of the leadership team.
• Own technical vision, architecture and platform direction as Niva expands across Latin America and new markets.

What You Bring

• 5-10 years of software engineering, recently at early-stage startups (seed to Series B)
• A staff or senior engineer who has led and built a team of about 5-15 engineers
• Still writing production code within the last 2 years
• Owned technical vision and enterprise-grade architecture for a scaling platform
• Shipped AI/ML systems to production with robust evaluation and observability
• Product-minded with an eye for UX
• Technical degree (CS, math, engineering, physics) from a top-25 school

Nice to Have

• Fintech, identity, KYC/KYB, fraud, risk or other regulated domains
• Multiple early-stage startups by choice

Interview Process

Initial screen with the CEO (30 min), technical screen with the CTO (30 min), technical exercise (1 hour), behavioral interviews with the CEO and CTO (45 min each).

Tech Stack

LLMs, multi-agent systems, B2B enterprise platform

REVENUE: 21.25% of first-year salary. Est. fee per hire $53K-$64K; 1 seat(s).

TARGET COMPANIES (suggested): Persona, Alloy, Plaid, Stripe, Sardine, Middesk, Mercado Libre.

BEST-FIT CANDIDATE: 5-10 (sweet spot 6-10) yrs; hands-on coding within 2 yrs; built/led 5-15 eng team at seed-B startup; top-25 technical degree; B2B enterprise + AI in prod; visa: transfers only; location: NYC 5 days preferred. Avoid pure managers (3+ yrs no code), big-tech-only careers, consumer/SMB-only product backgrounds.