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Overview:

Graphika is seeking an experienced Engineering Manager to lead a high-performing technical team tasked with advancing the infrastructure and systems that power our next-generation mapping technologies. This leadership role bridges strategic planning and deep technical expertise, providing both architectural direction and people management to ensure scalable, secure, and high-performing systems.

This is a player-coach role: you'll manage engineers and projects while remaining hands-on in writing code, reviews, and architectural decisions. You’ll work closely with our engineers and cross-functional teams to define system architectures, improve performance and reliability, and champion engineering best practices. You will play a pivotal role in developing our backend systems, infrastructure strategy, and technical roadmaps, while also nurturing talent and fostering a culture of technical excellence.

Key Responsibilities:

Technical Strategy & System Design

• Provide architectural oversight across backend systems, data pipelines, and cloud infrastructure, ensuring scalability, maintainability, and performance.
• Lead technical planning and decision-making for system-wide initiatives, partnering with Product and Design to ensure alignment with long-term goals.
• Guide the evolution of data ingestion, storage, and retrieval frameworks for high-volume, multi-source data environments.

Team Leadership & Mentorship

• Manage and mentor a team of engineers offering technical guidance, career development, and performance feedback.
• Conduct code reviews and design walkthroughs, fostering a culture of collaboration, learning, and continuous improvement.
• Serve as a technical mentor, helping junior and senior staff alike grow in their craft and architectural thinking.

Project Management & Delivery

• Own the planning and execution of large engineering projects, ensuring on-time delivery, cross-team coordination, and adherence to quality standards.
• Identify and mitigate risks in system design and implementation, ensuring reliability, security, and performance.
• Partner with stakeholders to scope and prioritize work, clearly communicating tradeoffs and timelines.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Collaborate with Product/Design, Labs/Research, and other teams to define requirements and drive execution.
• Ensure that engineering deliverables align with overall business objectives and user needs.
• Remove roadblocks between teams and advocate for better coordination and shared infrastructure practices.

Infrastructure & Systems Operations

• Design, implement, and maintain AWS-based infrastructure and CI/CD pipelines to support data and application services.
• Lead the effort to optimize monitoring, alerting, and performance tuning across Graphika’s backend services.
• Maintain oversight of secure API and service architecture, ensuring data integrity and access control best practices.

Innovation & Research

• Stay abreast of emerging technologies in systems architecture, cloud infrastructure, and data engineering.
• Lead technical evaluations and proof-of-concept efforts to explore new tools and methodologies.
• Contribute to technical roadmaps and innovation strategy, identifying future opportunities and challenges.

Qualifications:

• 5+ years of experience in software engineering with at least 2 years in a technical leadership or management role.
• Strong background in systems engineering, backend development, or data infrastructure at scale.
• Proficient in Python, and comfortable working across AWS services (e.g., ECS, Lambda, RDS, S3).
• Demonstrated success in leading engineering teams and driving large-scale technical initiatives.
• Excellent communication skills, with an ability to translate complex technical concepts for varied audiences.
• Experience building and operating performant, distributed systems with robust monitoring and security standards.
• Familiarity with agile methodologies and modern DevOps practices.

Preferred:

• Demonstrated interest in complex questions at the intersection of technology and society
• Prior experience at a company focused on threat intelligence or social media analytics