Engineering Manager I/II

Porter; India; On-site; INR 3,500,000 - 7,000,000; Full time

Job summary

Porter is building the operating system for intra-city logistics in India. We are seeking an Engineering Manager to lead a team of engineers responsible for building and operating business-critical systems at scale.

This high-ownership role focuses on owning outcomes, driving execution, developing people, and delivering impact across product, data, operations, and business. You will convert ambiguous goals into clear engineering plans, define milestones, owners, dependencies and success metrics,

Qualifications

• 8+ years of engineering experience with ownership
• Strong hands-on engineering background, backend/platform/distributed systems
• Experience delivering across multiple projects or workstreams
• Experience operating in fast-paced, high-ownership environments
• Exposure to systems at meaningful production scale
• Ability to coach and grow engineers
• Strong collaboration with Product, Business, Data, Ops, and Engineering

Responsibilities

• Lead a small engineering team with clarity and empathy
• Guide technical decisions across high-level and low-level design, 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 the team
• Own operational excellence including SLOs, dashboards, alerts, postmortems, rollout planning and production readiness
• Build and grow the team through coaching, feedback and clear expectations
• Create business impact by connecting engineering execution with real-world outcomes

Skills

Engineering leadership

Backend systems

Distributed systems

Project delivery

Fast-paced environment

Production-scale systems

Team coaching

Stakeholder collaboration

Job description

Permanent

Job Description

About Porter

Porter is building the operating system for intra-city logistics in India.

With ~20 million orders every month, 500K+ daily-active drivers, and rapid growth ahead, we solve complex real-world logistics problems at massive scale. Our systems power high-frequency, high-reliability marketplace operations where speed, cost efficiency, reliability, and customer experience all matter deeply.

At Porter, engineering is not just about building software. It is about building systems that move the country.

Role Overview

Build teams. Build systems. Build impact.

As an Engineering Manager 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 plans.

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 quality.

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 solutions.

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 your team.

You will drive SLOs, dashboards, alerts, incident management, postmortems, rollout planning, and production readiness.

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

Experience

• 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

Job Snapshot

Updated Date

24-08-2026

Job ID

JOB_2917

Department

Location