Director of Engineering — Trust & Safety

Company: Bitso

Location: Remote (LATAM)

Employment Type: Full Time

About the Company

With over 9 million users, Bitso is the leading cryptocurrency platform in Latin America. We are developing the cryptocurrency ecosystem in the region and enabling financial inclusion. We believe crypto is the future of finance, and we're committed to making it useful by providing equal access to safe and intuitive financial products.

We are a diverse team that takes pride in understanding the perspectives of others. We fully embrace working remotely and we are eager to act, improve and accelerate progress inside and outside of our organization.

About the Role

The Director of Engineering for Trust & Safety (Guardians) owns the systems that protect every Bitso account and keep the company compliant across Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia. The fleet covers identity and access, account protection, compliance and fraud detection, and the internal tooling that operations and compliance teams run on. This is a high-stakes, customer-critical fleet. When these systems fail, customers can lose access to their funds or the company can lose standing with a regulator.

The Director owns reliability, security, and compliance outcomes for the fleet, leads four engineering managers, and partners closely with Product, Compliance, Security, and Fraud. This leader reports to the CTO and works alongside the other engineering directors. Product strategy is set with Product partners; the Director owns technical excellence, reliability, talent, and engineering standards within the fleet.

Team Scope

• Squad: Identity & Access — Authentication, login, sessions, multi-account, and access control.
• Squad: Account Protection — Customer-facing security at the account layer — OTP, device, and account-level fraud protections.
• Squad: Compliance & Fraud Detection — Regulatory reporting, fraud detection, and compliance tooling across all four markets.
• Squad: Back-Office Systems — Internal operations and back-office tooling used by ops and compliance teams.

Responsibilities

• Own the availability, reliability, and security of identity, access, and account-protection systems — treating uptime and resilience as core product, with clear SLOs and strong incident discipline.
• Own the compliance and regulatory-reporting surface end to end across four jurisdictions, partnering with Compliance, Legal, and Risk to make reporting accurate, auditable, and timely.
• Drive the fraud-detection roadmap toward measurable customer impact: fewer account takeovers, faster detection, and less friction for legitimate users.
• Lead, develop, and grow four engineering managers and their squads — setting a high bar for hiring, performance, and technical quality.
• Set engineering standards across the fleet and hold teams accountable for the post-launch quality and reliability of what they ship.
• Lead an AI-native engineering team — raising both speed and the quality bar through modern, spec-driven development practices.
• Operate across functions and countries through influence and credibility, partnering with Product, Security, Fraud, and Compliance leaders.

Requirements

• Experience leading engineering at the multi-team level (20+ engineers, multiple managers reporting in) with direct accountability for production systems where downtime or error carries real consequences — payments, identity, security, fraud, or similar.
• A track record of building and raising the bar of an engineering team: hiring, leveling, developing strong engineers, and making the hard people calls.
• Hands-on ownership of reliability for a high-stakes system — fluent in SLOs and incident response, and able to describe structural changes made after major incidents.
• Experience in or close to a regulated environment (fintech, payments, banking, crypto, or similar), treating compliance as a first-class engineering requirement.
• Demonstrated ability to lead an AI-native team — changing how teams build with AI and showing the outcomes, not just adopting tools.
• Strong cross-functional leadership in a matrixed, multi-country organization.
• LATAM experience and Spanish or Portuguese are a strong plus.

What We Value

• Mission-Driven: Passionate about crypto and Bitso's mission, resilient in facing industry challenges.
• High Sense of Urgency: Demonstrate high sense of urgency and responsibility.
• Exceptional Hard Skills: Possess exceptional skills in your field, with no room for mediocrity.
• Self-Management: Independently manage your work, career, and professional development.

Benefits

• Me Time program, including unlimited paid time off.
• Remote-first work environment.
• Employee Stock Option program.
• Zero trading fees through Bitso Alpha app.
• Extended Family Leave Policy: all birthing parents, non-birthing parents and adopting parents are eligible for 4 months leave.
• Premium health, dental and life insurances in Mexico, Gibraltar, Colombia, USA, Brazil and Argentina.