---
title: 'DevOps Tech Lead Manager at Aplazo'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/devops-tech-lead-manager-aplazo-mexico-csrsy925xnwb'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-05'
---

# DevOps Tech Lead Manager at Aplazo

- **Company:** Aplazo
- **Location:** Mexico
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2026-09-02
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-05
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/aplazo/7a4e62f6-f015-4665-bb3c-1fcdb3e09be0

## Job description

## ABOUT THE ROLE

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.

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.

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.

## WHAT YOU’LL WORK ON

- Managing and growing a squad of 4–8 DevOps engineers (E1 through E3)
- Owning your squad’s delivery commitments, code/infra quality, and on-call rotation
- Staying hands-on with infrastructure as code, CI/CD, and observability work alongside your team
- Running 1:1s, writing performance reviews, and coaching career growth for your reports
- Hiring and onboarding new engineers into the squad
- Owning squad-level incidents and post-mortems, escalating proactively when needed
- Tying the squad’s work to business OKRs/KPIs and representing the squad in planning and cross-team syncs

## KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

## PEOPLE & TEAM DEVELOPMENT

- Hire and onboard engineers through E3; run regular 1:1s and write performance reviews
- Coach career growth for each report, with concrete development plans
- Build psychological safety and ownership in the squad so problems surface early, not in production
- Stay technically sharp enough to earn the squad’s trust as an engineer, not just a manager
- Act as a Culture & Values champion for the squad

## GET STUFF DONE

- Ensure the squad delivers on its commitments at a predictable velocity and measurable quality
- Own squad-level incidents and postmortems; escalate proactively rather than let issues fester
- Remove process, tooling, and tech-debt blockers instead of just escalating them
- Stay hands-on (40–60%) with IaC, CI/CD pipelines, observability (Datadog), and cloud cost optimization

## BUSINESS IMPACT

- Keep the squad’s work clearly tied to business OKRs and/or KPIs
- Proactively propose business value (OKRs/KPIs) — be a protagonist, not just an executor
- Give the squad a sense of purpose; explain why the work matters to the business
- Identify trade-offs that balance delivery speed against regulatory constraints (CNBV, Condusef, etc.)

## COMMUNICATION & LEADERSHIP

- Communicate clearly and kindly with reports, peers, and your own leader — including surfacing bad news early
- Communicate risk and trade-offs clearly and as publicly as possible to all stakeholders
- Represent the squad in planning, grooming, and cross-team syncs, recognizing individual contributions
- Know when to ask for help and when to escalate
- Give feedback that helps people improve, not feedback that just gets delivered
- Translate external and business pressure into clear priorities the squad can act on

## WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR

## REQUIRED EXPERIENCE

- 3+ years in DevOps, Platform, or Infrastructure Engineering with production ownership
- Prior experience leading a team formally (as a manager) or informally (as a tech lead) — hiring, mentoring, or running incident response for others
- Track record of owning delivery for a team, not just individual tickets
- Comfort operating as a working manager: 40–60% hands-on IC work alongside people management

## TECHNICAL SKILLS

- Strong expertise in Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Pulumi, or CloudFormation)
- Deep knowledge of CI/CD systems and modern delivery practices (trunk-based development, feature flags, incremental rollouts)
- Hands-on experience with AWS (Fargate, ECS, EC2, RDS/Postgres, ElastiCache, Lambda, SQS, Kinesis)
- Proficiency with observability tools – metrics, logs, traces, alerting (Datadog preferred)
- Comfortable with scripting/automation in Python, Bash, or Node.js/TypeScript
- Solid understanding of cloud security practices, secret management, and compliance requirements

## PEOPLE & MANAGEMENT SKILLS

- Experience running 1:1s, giving structured feedback, and writing performance reviews
- Ability to hire and onboard engineers, and to coach career growth across levels (E1–E3)
- Builds psychological safety — team members raise problems early rather than hide them
- Comfortable making people decisions (hiring, performance, growth plans) with fairness and empathy

## SOFT SKILLS

- Strong communicator: direct, clear, and comfortable surfacing bad news to reports, peers, and leadership — in Spanish, with working English for vendor/partner interactions
- Manages ambiguity well: adjusts to changing priorities, makes conscious trade-offs, and proposes best practices from scratch when needed
- Favors people over rigid process (Agile mindset) but takes workflow hygiene seriously (well-defined stories, estimation, clean PRs)
- Growth mindset: seeks feedback, mentors others, and continuously improves own craft

## NICE TO HAVE

- Familiarity with GCP services (BigQuery, Pub/Sub)
- Experience with MongoDB Atlas or other managed data stores
- Exposure to fintech, payments, or regulated environments (CNBV, SOC 2, PCI)
- Experience creating or improving on-call and incident response processes
- Prior formal people-management experience (title of Manager, EM, or Team Lead)
- Knowledge of DORA metrics and using them to drive team improvement

## WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

- Your squad delivers on its commitments at a predictable, measurable velocity and quality
- Incidents are owned end-to-end — proactive escalation, thorough post-mortems, and fewer repeat issues
- Your reports grow faster because of your coaching, 1:1s, and honest feedback
- The squad’s work is visibly tied to business OKRs/KPIs, and stakeholders trust your read on trade-offs
- Problems surface early because your squad feels safe raising them

## WHY JOIN US

- Lead a squad building the infrastructure that powers financial inclusion across Latin America
- Stay hands-on as an engineer while growing your people-leadership craft
- Work in a high-growth fintech at the intersection of infrastructure, delivery, and real business impact
- A team with deep roots in product, technology, and culture-focused companies.

## About Aplazo

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Aplazo is a Mexican fintech that provides a buy now, pay later (BNPL) platform enabling consumers to purchase goods in installments without needing a credit card, serving both online and physical merchants.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series B, $45 million raised in May 2024)
- **Headquarters**: Mexico City, Cuauhtémoc, Mexico City, Mexico
- **Founded**: 2020
- **Founders**: Angel Peña (Co-Founder & CEO) and others (COO also co-founder, but name not disclosed in sources)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Financial technology (BNPL / consumer payments)
- **Target customers**: B2C (underbanked and credit-invisible consumers in Mexico) and B2B (offline and online merchants seeking to increase sales and loyalty)
- **Mission or purpose statement**: To become the preferred payment method in Mexico by making credit more transparent, flexible, and accessible, especially for the large unbanked population.

## Products & Services
- **Aplazo BNPL**: A virtual card that allows shoppers to pay in installments (typically 20% upfront, remainder in fixed payments) without a credit card. Available in-store (more than half of transactions) and online.
- **Merchant Tools**: Integration services and data analytics that help businesses offer installment payments, drive conversion, and build customer loyalty.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed (private company)
- **Key Metric**: Total equity funding of ~$100 million, with an additional $75 million in committed debt. Revenue reportedly tripled in the past year (as of May 2024), and the company claimed to be near cash-flow breakeven.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: QED Investors (led Series B), Oak HC/FT, Kaszek, Picus Capital, and Volpe Capital (new investor). Partnerships with nearly 10,000 merchants.
- **Growth Signals**: Revenue tripled year-over-year; delinquency rates cut by half while business more than 3x’d; 40% of users have no credit history, giving Aplazo a unique data advantage; strong presence in physical retail (in-store >50% of transactions).

## Competitive Advantages
- **AI-powered underwriting**: The company uses AI to assess risk per transaction, enabling low delinquency even with limited traditional credit data.
- **Massive underserved market**: Mexico has a large underbanked population (~40% of users have no credit history), making it difficult for international players like Klarna or Affirm to compete.
- **Dual channel (online + offline)**: In-store BNPL is a key differentiator in a market where e-commerce penetration is still low.
- **Data moat**: With ~10,000 merchant relationships and millions of transactions, Aplazo’s data network continues to compound, improving both underwriting and merchant value.

## Strategic Focus
- **Deepen product ecosystem**: Use BNPL as a stepping stone to broader financial services (e.g., credit building, savings, or lending) for both consumers and merchants.
- **Expand merchant network**: Continue onboarding physical and digital retailers, leveraging in-store adoption.
- **Self-funded growth**: With near breakeven status and strong unit economics, the company aims to grow without heavy reliance on future dilution.

## Why Work Here
- **Hybrid work model**: Employees work in a combination of remote and on-site (office in Mexico City). Some roles are fully remote; others require occasional in-office time.
- **Culture of efficiency and AI**: The company emphasizes lean, data-driven operations. Engineering and data science teams are central, with AI embedded across the organization.
- **Growth trajectory**: Revenue tripling and disciplined scaling make it an attractive place for those wanting impact in an emerging market fintech.
- **Notable perks**: Not explicitly listed, but a “high-growth startup” environment with a focus on financial inclusion and real-world impact. Headcount is around 190 (BuiltIn) or 130 (TechCrunch 2024); engineering team of ~65 is a significant portion of the company.

## Sources
1. [aplazo.mx](https://aplazo.mx/)
2. [Built In - Aplazo careers](https://builtin.com/company/aplazo)
3. [TechCrunch - Series B announcement](https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/13/aplazo/)
4. [The Org - Aplazo team structure](https://theorg.com/org/aplazo)

## Other roles at Aplazo

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