Engineering Manager - Platform
First seen by Alion on Oct 14, 2026.
About the Role:
We're looking for an experienced Engineering Manager to lead the development of highly scalable, reliable, and secure platform services and database connectors that power mission-critical data pipelines for thousands of enterprise customers. These pipelines connect to modern data warehouses such as Snowflake, BigQuery, and Databricks, as well as Data Lakes like Apache Iceberg.
This is a rare opportunity to own and build foundational systems, solve complex engineering challenges, and lead a high-impact team delivering best-in-class performance at scale.
You will play a central role in shaping our platform vision, driving high accountability, and fostering a culture of technical excellence and high performance - while working closely with cross-functional stakeholders across product, program, support, and business teams.
What You'll Do :
- Lead, mentor and inspire a team of software engineers who take pride in ownership and delivering impact.
- Ensure operational excellence through proactive monitoring, automated processes, and a culture of continuous improvement with strong accountability.
- Drive a strong quality-first mindset, embedding it into the development lifecycle - from design to deployment.
- Drive technical leadership through architecture reviews, code guidance, and solving critical platform challenges.
- Build and operate multi-tenant, distributed backend systems at scale.
- Act as a technical leader - you've operated at least at Tech Lead, Staff Engineer, or Principal Engineer level in your career.
- Champion a culture of high accountability, clear ownership, and high visibility across engineering and cross-functional stakeholders.
- Collaborate deeply with Product, Program, Support, and Business functions to drive alignment and execution.
- Embed principles of observability, reliability, security, and auditability into all aspects of the platform.
- Inspire the team to pursue engineering excellence, driving best-in-class implementations and visible results.
- Define and track data-driven KPIs to ensure operational efficiency, performance, and team effectiveness.
- Take end-to-end ownership of product lines, ensuring on-time delivery and customer success.
- Contribute to team growth, hiring, and building an inclusive, learning-focused engineering environment.
What We're Looking For :
- 10+ years of experience in backend or systems software development.
- 2+ years in a formal or informal Engineering Manager, Sr. Engineering Manager, or Tech Lead role in a fast-paced engineering environment.
- Progression through senior IC roles like Tech Lead, Staff, or Principal Engineer.
- Strong experience with distributed systems, cloud-native architectures, and multi-tenant platforms.
- Proven ability to drive cross-team collaboration with product, support, business, and program teams.
- Demonstrated ability to drive accountability, set clear goals, and raise the performance bar for the team.
- Expertise in system design, scalability, performance optimization, and cost control.
- Proven track record of mentoring engineers, guiding architecture, and leading impactful initiatives.
- Clear communicator, adept at both strategy and execution.
Bonus Points :
- Experience with data engineering platforms, ETL systems, or database internals.
- Exposure to product-driven companies, especially in infrastructure, SaaS, or backup/data systems.
- Demonstrated history of fast-tracked growth or high-visibility impact.
- Led or contributed to re-architecture or greenfield systems at scale.
Skills
Engineering Management, Distributed Systems, Native Cloud, Backend Architecture, System Design