DevOps Tech Lead Manager at Aplazo

Mexico

<h1><strong>About the role</strong></h1><p style="min-height:1.5em">Aplazo’s mission is to empower financial access, opportunity, and freedom by connecting people and businesses in Latin America through fair, simple, and transparent financial solutions.</p><p style="min-height:1.5em"></p><p style="min-height:1.5em">We are looking for a DevOps Tech Lead Manager to lead our DevOps squad — the team that keeps Aplazo’s core infrastructure reliable, scalable, and secure. This is a first-line people management role: you will own the squad’s delivery, quality, and on-call, while staying hands-on as an engineer 40–60% of your time. You are as comfortable running a 1:1 or writing a performance review as you are debugging a production incident or reviewing a Terraform change.</p><p style="min-height:1.5em"></p><p style="min-height:1.5em">You are the person your squad trusts to remove blockers, tell them the truth (good or bad), and connect their day-to-day work to why it matters for Aplazo’s business.</p><p style="min-height:1.5em"></p><h1><strong>What you’ll work on</strong></h1><ul style="min-height:1.5em"><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Managing and growing a squad of 4–8 DevOps engineers (E1 through E3)</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Owning your squad’s delivery commitments, code/infra quality, and on-call rotation</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Staying hands-on with infrastructure as code, CI/CD, and observability work alongside your team</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Running 1:1s, writing performance reviews, and coaching career growth for your reports</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Hiring and onboarding new engineers into the squad</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Owning squad-level incidents and post-mortems, escalating proactively when needed</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Tying the squad’s work to business OKRs/KPIs and representing the squad in planning and cross-team syncs</p></li></ul><p style="min-height:1.5em"></p><h1><strong>Key responsibilities</strong></h1><h2><strong>People &amp; Team Development</strong></h2><ul style="min-height:1.5em"><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Hire and onboard engineers through E3; run regular 1:1s and write performance reviews</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Coach career growth for each report, with concrete development plans</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Build psychological safety and ownership in the squad so problems surface early, not in production</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Stay technically sharp enough to earn the squad’s trust as an engineer, not just a manager</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Act as a Culture &amp; Values champion for the squad</p></li></ul><p style="min-height:1.5em"></p><h2><strong>Get Stuff Done</strong></h2><ul style="min-height:1.5em"><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Ensure the squad delivers on its commitments at a predictable velocity and measurable quality</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Own squad-level incidents and postmortems; escalate proactively rather than let issues fester</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Remove process, tooling, and tech-debt blockers instead of just escalating them</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Stay hands-on (40–60%) with IaC, CI/CD pipelines, observability (Datadog), and cloud cost optimization</p></li></ul><p style="min-height:1.5em"></p><h2><strong>Business Impact</strong></h2><ul style="min-height:1.5em"><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Keep the squad’s work clearly tied to business OKRs and/or KPIs</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Proactively propose business value (OKRs/KPIs) — be a protagonist, not just an executor</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Give the squad a sense of purpose; explain why the work matters to the business</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Identify trade-offs that balance delivery speed against regulatory constraints (CNBV, Condusef, etc.)</p></li></ul><p style="min-height:1.5em"></p><h2><strong>Communication &amp; Leadership</strong></h2><ul style="min-height:1.5em"><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Communicate clearly and kindly with reports, peers, and your own leader — including surfacing bad news early</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Communicate risk and trade-offs clearly and as publicly as possible to all stakeholders</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Represent the squad in planning, grooming, and cross-team syncs, recognizing individual contributions</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Know when to ask for help and when to escalate</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Give feedback that helps people improve, not feedback that just gets delivered</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Translate external and business pressure into clear priorities the squad can act on</p></li></ul><p style="min-height:1.5em"></p><h1><strong>What we’re looking for</strong></h1><h2><strong>Required experience</strong></h2><ul style="min-height:1.5em"><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">3+ years in DevOps, Platform, or Infrastructure Engineering with production ownership</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Prior experience leading a team formally (as a manager) or informally (as a tech lead) — hiring, mentoring, or running incident response for others</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Track record of owning delivery for a team, not just individual tickets</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Comfort operating as a working manager: 40–60% hands-on IC work alongside people management</p></li></ul><p style="min-height:1.5em"></p><h2><strong>Technical skills</strong></h2><ul style="min-height:1.5em"><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Strong expertise in Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Pulumi, or CloudFormation)</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Deep knowledge of CI/CD systems and modern delivery practices (trunk-based development, feature flags, incremental rollouts)</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Hands-on experience with AWS (Fargate, ECS, EC2, RDS/Postgres, ElastiCache, Lambda, SQS, Kinesis)</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Proficiency with observability tools – metrics, logs, traces, alerting (Datadog preferred)</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Comfortable with scripting/automation in Python, Bash, or Node.js/TypeScript</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Solid understanding of cloud security practices, secret management, and compliance requirements</p></li></ul><p style="min-height:1.5em"></p><h2><strong>People &amp; management skills</strong></h2><ul style="min-height:1.5em"><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Experience running 1:1s, giving structured feedback, and writing performance reviews</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Ability to hire and onboard engineers, and to coach career growth across levels (E1–E3)</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Builds psychological safety — team members raise problems early rather than hide them</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Comfortable making people decisions (hiring, performance, growth plans) with fairness and empathy</p></li></ul><p style="min-height:1.5em"></p><h2><strong>Soft skills</strong></h2><ul style="min-height:1.5em"><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Strong communicator: direct, clear, and comfortable surfacing bad news to reports, peers, and leadership — in Spanish, with working English for vendor/partner interactions</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Manages ambiguity well: adjusts to changing priorities, makes conscious trade-offs, and proposes best practices from scratch when needed</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Favors people over rigid process (Agile mindset) but takes workflow hygiene seriously (well-defined stories, estimation, clean PRs)</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Growth mindset: seeks feedback, mentors others, and continuously improves own craft</p></li></ul><p style="min-height:1.5em"></p><h1><strong>Nice to have</strong></h1><ul style="min-height:1.5em"><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Familiarity with GCP services (BigQuery, Pub/Sub)</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Experience with MongoDB Atlas or other managed data stores</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Exposure to fintech, payments, or regulated environments (CNBV, SOC 2, PCI)</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Experience creating or improving on-call and incident response processes</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Prior formal people-management experience (title of Manager, EM, or Team Lead)</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Knowledge of DORA metrics and using them to drive team improvement</p></li></ul><p style="min-height:1.5em"></p><h1><strong>What success looks like</strong></h1><ul style="min-height:1.5em"><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Your squad delivers on its commitments at a predictable, measurable velocity and quality</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Incidents are owned end-to-end — proactive escalation, thorough post-mortems, and fewer repeat issues</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Your reports grow faster because of your coaching, 1:1s, and honest feedback</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">The squad’s work is visibly tied to business OKRs/KPIs, and stakeholders trust your read on trade-offs</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Problems surface early because your squad feels safe raising them</p></li></ul><p style="min-height:1.5em"></p><h1><strong>Why join us</strong></h1><ul style="min-height:1.5em"><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Lead a squad building the infrastructure that powers financial inclusion across Latin America</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Stay hands-on as an engineer while growing your people-leadership craft</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">Work in a high-growth fintech at the intersection of infrastructure, delivery, and real business impact</p></li><li><p style="min-height:1.5em">A team with deep roots in product, technology, and culture-focused companies.</p></li></ul>