Program Engineering Manager

Open Digital Services (ODS)
is the software development company of Santander Group powering the next generation of banks by creating innovative banking products and implementing them in collaboration with Santander Group affiliates.

Santander Group
is one of the world's largest financial institutions and the Eurozone's leader. We're committed to being the best Digital Bank with branches in the industry.

Our mission at
ODS
is to design and support an advanced digital and omnichannel platform, ensuring the best customer experience using cutting‑edge technology.
Openbank
, our flagship partner, is where we develop our most advanced concepts first. Be part of our best‑in‑class team and help us create unique value for our customers

Join us to tackle exciting tech challenges in an agile environment, benefiting from learning, growth, and local and international career opportunities in a modern, diverse setting.

Currently, we are looking for a
Program Engineering Manager
to make the team even stronger.

Scope note:
This is a
100% technical engineering
role. Product prioritization and ownership lie with the
Product Manager (PM)
.

Responsibilities

As a Program Engineering Manager, you will lead the technical delivery of one or more squads within your vertical, ensuring quality, scalability, security, performance, and on‑time delivery—aligned with the global architecture and stack. You will work closely with Product and Design under the
"Three Amigos"
model (Product, Technology, and Design), without assuming backlog ownership. You're responsible for team development, reliable production deployments, and the continuous improvement of engineering practices.

• Technical direction & architecture:
  Guide design decisions, integration patterns, and standards; ensure compliance with non‑functional requirements (performance, resilience, cost, security).
• Quality & practices:
  Establish and govern coding standards, code reviews, automated tests (unit/integration/contract/E2E), CI/CD, and branching/versioning.
• Delivery & releases:
  Orchestrate releases to pre‑production and production, manage changes/incidents, reduce lead time and change failure rate, and improve deployment cadence.
• Reliability & operations:
  Define/track SLOs/SLIs, manage error budgets, strengthen observability (logs, metrics, traces), alerting, and runbooks to reduce MTTR.
• Security & compliance:
  Promote security‑by‑design (secret management, least privilege,
  SBOM
  , vulnerability remediation) and adherence to policies.
• Cross‑functional collaboration:
  Coordinate with Architecture, Cybersecurity, Risk, Legal, Compliance, and Operations; align dependencies with other Engineering Managers/Chapter Leads; represent the domain to global stakeholders.
• Mobile (when applicable):
  Coordinate technical integration for iOS/Android (versioning, feature flags, functional validations) and the publishing pipeline with mobile teams.
• Methods:
  Promote adoption of development standards and best practices (SCRUM, KANBAN principles, agile methodologies) within the domain.

What you'll need to succeed

• 8+ years
  total in software development/architecture, including
  3+ years
  leading engineering teams (people & delivery).
• At least 1 year
  of experience with
  mobile applications and architecture
  .
• Strong command of
  distributed architectures
  ,
  microservices
  ,
  REST/gRPC/event‑driven APIs
  , testing, and versioning.
• Experience with
  cloud‑native
  (AWS/Azure/GCP),
  containers/orchestration
  ,
  Infrastructure as Code
  , and
  CI/CD
  pipeline governance.
• Ability to read and review code in at least one relevant stack; perform targeted PoCs/debugging to unblock the team (this is
  not
  a full‑time development role).
• Observability & performance:
  metrics, structured logging, traces, profiling.
• Proven leadership of multidisciplinary teams, clear communication, and impact‑ and data‑driven decision‑making.
• Dependency management and negotiation with multiple stakeholders in global environments.
• Strong problem‑solving orientation and continuous improvement mindset; high ownership.
• Language:
  Professional English proficiency to collaborate and document with global teams.

Nice to have

• 3+ years
  of experience in
  fintech/financial institutions
  .
• Tools (grouped):
• Planning/management:
  Jira, Confluence.
• Version control/CI/CD:
  Git, Jenkins/GitHub Actions or equivalents, artifact registries.
• Containers:
  Docker and orchestration.
• APIs & testing:
  Postman/Insomnia, testing frameworks.

What we offer

• Open to a
  hybrid model in CDMX
  or
  remote within the Mexican Republic
  .
• Join a dynamic and agile company undergoing international expansion.
• Work in start‑up mode with the support of Santander Group.
• Competitive salary and attractive benefits package.
• Growth opportunities within the company and the Group.
• Collaboration on international projects in different countries.
• Excellent work environment, social clubs, and frequent events.

Would you like to grow with us?
Join our team

ODS is an equal opportunity employer.
All applicants will be considered equally regardless of gender identity, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, age, political orientation, union membership, or disability status.

We make recruiting decisions based on your experience and skills. We value your passion to discover, invent, simplify, and build.