First Circle is an SME credit-centric, multi-product NeoBank in SE Asia which is fast-growing (>100%), profitable, and internationalising soon.
We started life as an SME lender in the Philippines in 2016 to solve the SME credit gap by using technology to systemise underwriting, deliver exceptional UX, and automate away delivery costs. We’ve delivered our clients the fastest, cheapest, most flexible credit line available to businesses anywhere in Southeast Asia. We’ve been rewarded with both fast growth and exceptional unit economics, a rare combination in our space.
Over the past two years we’ve expanded our product range to include business bank accounts & payments, e-Invoices, corporate credit cards, rooftop solar, and most recently deposits catalysed by securing a full bank charter in the Philippines. In 2027, we’ll expand our geographical coverage to include at least two new markets in APAC.
Our excellent track record results from our people & culture. We combine high standards & intensity with a collegiate environment. Our barometers of success are the rate of personal growth of our people, how long high performers choose to stay, and ensuring we raise the bar with every hire.
About The Opportunity
We are building an entirely automated, end-to-end international SME financial services company. The systems this role owns are the rails that make that possible: every drawdown, repayment, transfer, ledger entry and reconciliation runs across them.
End-to-end automation is a hugely complex goal. It demands world-class engineering design and infrastructure planning, meticulous attention to detail, and a very high bar on correctness. Doing it across multiple geographies, each with its own regulators, currencies and accounting rules, raises the complexity again.
This is not a conventional feature-backlog product role - in reality it will be part product owner, part systems architect: someone who designs how money moves through the company, makes sure every component works together, and drives it to production with our engineers.
What You'll Own
- Loan Management: Our loan management system (LMS): loan plans, drawdowns, repayment schedules, early repayment, rescheduling, overdue settlement, direct debit and collections logic
- Debt Management: The systems behind our own funding: debt facilities, borrowing bases, covenant monitoring, investor and lender reporting
- Finance Systems: General ledger, sub-ledgers, accounting automation, reconciliation, month-end close and regulatory reporting
Today these systems already carry a loan book growing at more than 100% a year. Your job is to make them fully automated, correct by design, and ready to run in new countries.
What You'll Do
- Architect the rails: design how money and data move across loans, debt and the ledger, built for failure and for multi-entity, multi-currency markets
- Automate end to end: engineer out every manual step and workaround, and move business rules into configurable controls for Ops and Finance
- Build controls: put in the monitoring and daily checks that catch errors before customers, auditors or regulators do
- Execute with engineering: write precise specs, work with engineers daily, and hold the bar on correctness through to production
- Scale internationally: turn each new market's regulatory and accounting needs into system design, with Finance, Risk, Compliance and country teams
- Own the metrics: straight-through processing, reconciliation breaks, and close time
Requirements
Above all: systems-level technical intelligence and an obsession with correctness.
Experience
- 4+ years in product or systems roles owning lending, ledger or finance systems
- A track record of automating manual financial processes end to end
- Multi-country rollout and APAC experience a strong plus
Skills and traits
- Systems thinker who designs for failure, robustness and scale
- Technically fluent (SQL, APIs, data models) and financially literate (accruals, accounting entries, settlement)
- Relentless attention to detail, precise writing, and high ownership
Benefits
- Work at a fast-growing fintech on meaningful products that reshape SME finance in Southeast Asia.
- We don't have a fixed budget for the role as we hire from all over the world. When we find the right person, we will pay them competitively vs their market rate.
- Macbooks, health insurance, training budget, and more!
- Rapid growth opportunities within a fast-growing business
- Flexibility to work remotely with opportunities for travel.
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