Engineering Manager

Porter; Bengaluru Urban; On-site; INR 4,000,000 - 6,000,000; Full time

Job summary

Porter is seeking an Engineering Manager-1 to lead a team of engineers responsible for building and operating business-critical systems at scale in India. You will stay close to technology while driving execution, developing people, and delivering measurable business impact.

You will own outcomes, guide technical direction, drive reliability, and partner with Product, Data, and Operations to connect engineering work with real customer value.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of engineering experience.
• Experience leading or directly managing engineers.
• Strong backend/platform/distributed systems background.

Responsibilities

• Lead a small engineering team with clarity, ownership, and empathy.
• Guide technical decisions across HLD, LLD, reliability, and scale.
• Ensure systems are observable, reliable, and production-ready.
• Partner with Product, Business, Data, and Operations to solve real user problems.
• Build a strong engineering culture within your team.
• Own outcomes and drive execution.

Skills

Engineering leadership

Backend/Distributed systems

Delivery across projects

Fast-paced environment

Production-scale systems

Hands-on engineering

Job description

At Porter, we’re on a mission to move a billion dreams by building the most trusted, efficient, and seamless logistics platform in India. We started in 2014 with a simple vision — to transform intra-city logistics through technology. Today, Porter is a late-stage startup, serving millions of users across 21+ cities, backed by marquee investors like Tiger Global, Lightrock, and Sequoia.

We solve real-world problems — from empowering micro-entrepreneurs and truck owners, to optimizing last-mile delivery for SMEs and enterprises. Every challenge we take on has real consequences and real impact.

With a sharp focus on user obsession, ownership, and collaboration, we’re building a workplace where people thrive when they take bold bets, move fast, and build with empathy.

If you’re looking to work where scale meets purpose, complexity fuels learning, and culture isn’t an afterthought, Porter is the place.

Role Overview

Build teams. Build systems. Build impact.

As an Engineering Manager - 1 at Porter, you will lead a team of engineers responsible for building and operating business-critical systems at scale.This is a high-ownership role for someone who enjoys staying close to technology while also driving execution, developing people, and creating business impact. You will be responsible for:

• Leading a small engineering team with clarity, ownership, and empathy
• Guiding technical decisions across HLD, LLD, reliability, and scale
• Ensuring systems are observable, reliable, and production-ready
• Partnering with Product, Business, Data, and Operations to solve real user problems
• Building a strong engineering culture within your team
• This role is not about managing status updates.
• It is about owning outcomes.

What You’ll Do

You will convert ambiguous business and product goals into clear engineering p

lans.You will define milestones, owners, dependencies, risks, and success metrics. You will drive execution rhythm, surface risks early, and ensure your team delivers with predictability and qua

lity.You will balance speed, scope, quality, reliability, and cost while keeping business impact at the center.

Guide Technical Direction

You will work closely with engineers to shape strong technical solu

tions. You will review HLDs and LLDs, challenge assumptions, identify reliability and scale gaps, and help the team make sound trade

offs.You are not expected to write every line of code, but you are expected to raise the quality of technical decision-making.

Own Operational Excellence

You will be accountable for the operational health of systems owned by you

r team.You will drive SLOs, dashboards, alerts, incident management, postmortems, rollout planning, and production rea

diness.At Porter’s scale, launch is not the finish line. Systems need to run reliably after they are shipped.

Build and Grow Your Team

You will manage, coach, and develop engineers.

You will set clear expectations, provide regular feedback, help people grow in scope, and handle difficult conversations with empathy and clarity. You will create a team environment where engineers feel trusted, accountable, and motivated to do high-quality work.

Create Business Impact

You will work closely with Product, Business, Data, and Operations to connect engineering execution with real-world outcomes. Your team’s work will directly impact customers, driver partners, marketplace reliability, operational efficiency, and cost. You will not just manage engineering work. You will solve business problems through engineering teams.

What We’re Looking For

• 8+ years of overall engineering experience
• Prior experience managing or directly leading engineers
• Strong hands‑on engineering background, preferably in backend, platform, marketplace, or distributed systems
• Experience driving delivery across multiple projects or workstreams
• Experience operating in fast‑paced, high‑ownership environments
• Exposure to systems running at meaningful production scale.

Technical Judgment

You should be able to:

• Review HLDs and LLDs with depth
• Reason about APIs, service boundaries, data models, scale, reliability, and failure modes
• Identify design gaps before they become production issues
• Partner effectively with senior engineers and architects
• Balance technical quality with business urgency

Execution Strength

You should be strong at:

• Breaking complex goals into clear plans
• Managing risks, dependencies, and trade‑offs
• Driving alignment across Product, Business, Data, Ops, and Engineering
• Communicating status, risks, and decisions crisply
• Maintaining momentum through ambiguity and changing priorities

You should bring:

• Strong ownership of team outcomes
• Ability to coach and grow engineers
• Clear and constructive feedback style
• Empathy with accountability
• Ability to build trust, resolve conflict, and raise the team’s performance bar

Mindset

We value leaders who demonstrate:

• Own It — take accountability for outcomes
• Keep Moving — act with urgency and clarity in ambiguity
• User Obsession — understand real customer and business impact
• Collaborate to Win — work well across teams and functions
• Empathy Driven — support people while maintaining high standards

Why Join Porter?

• Lead teams building systems at massive real-world scale
• Solve complex logistics and marketplace problems unique to India‑scale operations
• Work in a culture that values ownership, speed, frugality, reliability, and impact
• Partner closely with Product, Business, Data, and Operations to influence meaningful outcomes
• Build both systems and teams for Porter’s next phase of growth

In Summary

As an EM-1 at Porter, you will be a systems‑minded engineering leader responsible for your team’s execution, technical quality, operational health, and talent growth.

This role is for leaders who can stay close to technology, lead people with empathy, and deliver business‑critical outcomes with high ownership.