Kiru x Incubly

Turning Growth into Governance:

How Embedded Leadership Scaled Engineering at Kiru

The Client

Kiru is a fintech startup headquartered
in Austin, Texas, offering a SaaS-based payroll and employee benefits platform tailored for small and medium-sized businesses.

With a strong mission to empower financial inclusion, Kiru focuses on enabling flexible,
digital-first payroll experiences across
Latin America.

The Challenge

Kiru had validated its product in the market and secured early success. But with growing user adoption
and international expansion accelerating, the engineering organization encountered a natural evolution challenge –
transitioning from startup agility to scalable operations.

The challenge wasn’t simply about hiring more engineers. Teams were delivering consistently – yet the complexity
of coordinating across distributed locations in Poland, Colombia, and the US was beginning to impact delivery speed
and cross-team alignment. What worked brilliantly at a smaller scale needed refinement for the next growth phase.

Kiru’s CEO recognized that maturing the delivery engine required more than traditional team augmentation.
It demanded hands-on leadership capable of embedding sustainable practices
while maintaining the startup’s agility and speed.

The Collaboration Journey

Phase _1

Embedded Engineering Leadership

Incubly appointed a Head of Engineering who became an integral part of Kiru’s leadership team. Rather than
operating as external consultants, we worked from within Kiru’s organizational fabric – understanding
the delivery culture before reshaping it.

The transformation balanced external expertise with internal ownership. Incubly provided structural frameworks
while Kiru teams retained decision-making authority over product direction and implementation priorities.

See results

  • Engineering-product alignment strengthened through embedded leadership integration
  • Direct oversight established over six engineering teams with unified leadership approach
  • Streamlined agile delivery practices implemented across all distributed locations
  • Sprint planning cadences redesigned for improved cross-team coordination
  • Backlog ownership redefined with clear product priority alignment

Phase _2

Scaling Without Chaos

To support Kiru’s expanding needs, Incubly led the engineering organization’s growth from 25 to 50 people
within 12 months – building capabilities across backend, frontend, mobile, DevOps, and QA disciplines.

The scaling approach combined rapid capacity building with cultural preservation, ensuring new teams
integrated seamlessly into existing delivery standards while maintaining startup agility.



See results

  • Engineering team doubled from 25 to 50 people across strategic disciplines
  • New teams established and intdegtated across nearshore (Colombia) and offshore (Poland) locations
  • Comprehensive onboarding frameworks implemented for consistent team integration
  • Performance alignment rituals introduced for cross-border team synchronisation
  • Dedicated end-to-end validation team created with automated testing pipeline integration
  • Continuous quality controls established with measurable deployment reliability improvements

Phase _3

Enabling Predictable Delivery

With Through systematic agile process refinement and quality discipline enforcement, the focus shifted to embedding
sustainable delivery excellence that would function independently of external support.

The transformation extended beyond operational improvements to create a self-sustaining culture of ownership
and continuous improvement.

See results

  • Sprint delivery predictability achieved 90%+ consistency through systematic process maturation
  • Technical debt addressed via rigorous process adherence and architectural alignment
  • Cross-team dependencies streamlined through integration planning and workflow optimisation
  • Sustainable culture of ownership embedded with delivery transparency standards
  • Continuous improvement practices institutionalised across all engineering teams
  • Knowledge transfer completed ensuring long-term operational independence

The impact

Accelerated international expansion enabled through scalable engineering infrastructure across three strategic markets

Enhanced delivery velocity with 90%+ sprint predictability replacing inconsistent coordination patterns

Operational cost efficiency achieved through optimized team distribution and standardized processes across regions

Quality-first culture establishment via automated testing pipelines and continuous validation practices

Leadership capability building through embedded knowledge transfer creating self-sustaining management structures

Risk mitigation for scale by transforming ad-hoc processes into predictable, repeatable delivery frameworks

What the Client Says

“We were fortunate to partner with Incubly for our worldwide Engineering support. Their expertise, management, organization building, and support skills significantly advanced our product and developed a sophisticated industrialization and scaling of our Engineering platform, including Architecture and Solution Design, Development, Support & DevOps Engineering, robust QA validation cycle, and technical release coordination.” 

– Carlos Roca, CEO, Kiru LLC

Scaling delivery requires leadership transformation, not just headcount expansion.

Kiru’s journey demonstrates that embedded engineering leadership can deliver organizational alignment
and operational efficiency even across globally distributed teams. Process maturity accelerates sustainable growth.

Predictable sprints, integrated QA practices,
and disciplined agile implementation unlocked faster product evolution without compromising
stability or delivery quality.

Cultural embedding creates lasting change.
By working within Kiru’s organizational structure rather than
as external advisors, Incubly created sustainable transformation through daily practice and knowledge transfer
that continued beyond the engagement period.