Engineering Manager - Retrieval

Zendesk, Inc.; Kraków; Hybrid; PLN 324,000 - 486,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonus potential

Job summary

Zendesk, Inc. is expanding its Krakow-based engineering leadership to drive ML-powered retrieval and RAG-enabled customer experience tools. You will guide engineers, align cross‑functional teams, and collaborate with senior leaders to improve delivery and reliability.

The role emphasizes hands‑on coaching, strong communication, and a focus on inclusive team growth in a hybrid environment across Poland and Portugal. Poland salary range zł324,000.00–zł486,000.00 with possible bonuses.

Qualifications

• Experience managing people across one or more teams in large, distributed systems.
• Proven ability to align interdependent teams and features for delivery.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Strong prioritization to maximize impact across multiple initiatives.

Responsibilities

• Lead a team of engineers; provide direction and support through project lifecycle.
• Collaborate with leadership to improve software delivery and service reliability.
• Maintain high service levels for your team’s products and services.
• Lead recruitment, streamline interviews, and onboard new team members quickly and effectively.
• Hold regular 1:1s focused on performance, growth, and well‑being; foster an inclusive, thriving environment.

Skills

People management

Strategic planning

Communication

Prioritization

Interviewing

Collaboration

Tools

Ruby

Python

Kubernetes

Docker

AWS

Elasticsearch

Job description

Job Description

Zendesk's people have one goal in mind: to make Customer Experience better. Our products help more than 145,000 global brands (Airbnb, Uber, JetBrains, Slack, among others) make their billions of customers happy, every day.

Our team is dedicated to providing a robust multimedia search experience for our customers across multiple channels, including help centers, RAG (retrieval-augmented-generation) and AI Agents bots and CoPilot systems. In collaboration with ML engineers and scientists, we deliver high-quality AI products leveraging the latest tools and techniques, and serve them at a scale that most companies can only dream of. We're passionate about empowering end-users to find what they're looking for, and helping our customers get the most out of their knowledge base.

What you'll be doing

• Lead a team of experienced Engineers, offering direction and assistance at every stage of the lifecycle of the project.
• Collaborate with existing leadership to continually improve software delivery and service reliability.
• Maintain exceptional service levels on your team's products and services.
• Lead the recruitment of new team members and facilitate a speedy, engaged interview and onboarding process.
• Have quality 1:1s with your team members focusing on their performance, growth and well-being.
• Create a diverse and inclusive working environment where people can thrive.

What you bring to the role

• Experience managing people across one or more teams, ideally working with large, distributed Internet-facing systems.
• Background in medium/large companies: understanding the interconnections between various teams and features is vital for success in this role.
• Phenomenal communication skills, both written and verbal.
• Refined prioritization skills: you are able to focus your and the team's time and energy where it'll have the most impact.
• A dedication to continual self-development.
• Collaborative, upbeat work ethic where you can take ownership and have fun.

We’d love to see:

• Expertise in leading the delivery of ML-powered products or Retrieval systems to production.

Tech Stack

Our codebase is primarily written in Ruby and Python. Data is stored in RDS MySQL, Redis, S3, Elasticsearch and Kafka. Our platform is built on AWS. Services are deployed to Kubernetes using Docker, with Kafka for stream processing. Infrastructure health is monitored using Datadog and Sentry.

What we offer

• Full ownership of the projects you work on.
• Exciting opportunity to work on Retrieval and RAG (retrieval-augmented generation), a rapidly evolving field in AI and natural language processing.
• Ownership of product features at scale, making a significant impact for millions of end-users.
• A team of passionate people who love what they do.
• Exciting projects, with the ability to implement your own ideas and improvements.
• Opportunity to learn and grow.

Where We Work

We're rapidly growing our teams in Lisbon - Portugal and Krakow - Poland. We have exciting next-generation ML-powered products that are already in use by customers in the banking and finance area, online and offline retailers, and even national postal services. You will work with a driven team, passionate about delivering the right experience to end-users using sophisticated and pioneering ML technology.

#LI-MK12

The Poland annualized base salary range for this position is zł324,000.00-zł486,000.00. Please note that while the salary range represents the minimum and maximum base salary rate for this position, the actual compensation offered will be based on job related capabilities, applicable experience, and other relevant factors. This position may also be eligible for bonus, benefits, or related incentives that will be communicated during the offer stage.

The intelligent heart of customer experience

Zendesk software was built to bring a sense of calm to the chaotic world of customer service. Today we power billions of conversations with brands you know and love.

Zendesk believes in offering our people a fulfilling and inclusive experience. Our hybrid way of working, enables us to purpos