Micaela Connors

About Micaela Connors

In 8+ years building fintech products and engineering teams, I\'ve learned that the most durable impact comes from getting the platform right and the team culture right — at the same time. At Remitly, I lead distributed engineering teams across Seattle and Vancouver delivering global payments infrastructure used by millions of customers. Recent highlights include scaling instant bank-based payment options to 80 of Remitly\'s top-100 global corridors (~95% of QAUs), exceeding a core customer retention OKR by 2x, and delivering $6.53M in net annualized savings through fraud prevention infrastructure — recognized as the most impactful product-led retention initiative of 2025. Before managing teams, I was a full-stack engineer — which means I care about technical quality as much as delivery, and I can go deep when it matters. I\'ve led organizations from 3 to 29 engineers, founded a new engineering office in Vancouver from 0 to 53 people, and built platforms that have meaningfully reduced the cost and time of scaling globally. What I focus on as a leader: payments and fintech infrastructure, distributed systems, platform architecture, and creating engineering cultures where talented people do the best work of their careers.

Experience

1. Senior Software Engineering Manager

   Remitly

   Oct 2025 — Present · Seattle, WA, US

   Led Remitly\'s Money Movements Experience engineering teams through a pivotal year of global payments expansion — with a clear mandate to improve early customer retention and repeat activity through better payment selection and experiences.Over the course of the year, I led 12 engineers across Seattle and Vancouver to scale instant bank-based payment options from just 1 of Remitly\'s top-10 corridors to 80 of the top-100 globally, reaching ~95% of QAUs. The work was recognized internally as the most impactful and durable product-led retention initiative of 2025, finishing the year exceeding our core OKR by 2x (+71 bps realized vs.+33 bps expected).Beyond corridor expansion, I led front-end development deploying our Plaid integration for ACH Fraud Prevention — contributing to a 47% reduction in ACH fraud losses and $6.53M in net annualized savings. I also drove a 76% reduction in time to deliver new Payment Expansions through Project Blueprint, and expanded the team\'s charter into Recipient Experience, generating +$755K NPV via India UPI verified recipient lookups.Throughout, I partnered closely with product and senior ICs to balance near-term delivery with long-term platform investment — and invested in growing the next layer of leadership, including developing one of my senior engineers into an Engineering Manager.

Education

• University of Wisconsin-Madison

  Bachelor of Science (BS), Computer Science

  2012

Skills

• Labview
• Public Speaking
• Communication
• Microsoft Word
• Manufacturing
• Microsoft Excel
• Java
• Written Communication
• Engineering
• Teamwork
• Social Media
• Event Planning
• Leading Meetings
• Research
• Microsoft Office
• Mechanical Engineering
• C
• Leadership