Engineering Manager

Playlist; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 164,000 - 219,000; Full time

Job summary

Playlist is seeking an experienced engineering leader to guide a high-output team in building scalable cloud platforms and developer infrastructure. You will drive technical vision, architect critical systems on AWS, and partner with product and design to deliver a robust Contact solution across verticals.

You will mentor engineers, prioritize work, and shape the direction of platform and tooling, ensuring reliability, scalability, and rapid iteration.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of direct management experience with an engineering team of at least 6 members.
• Proven track record designing, data-modeling, and building production cloud platforms (AWS) at scale.
• Strong grounding in infrastructure-as-code and CI/CD with operational rigor across incident response, observability, networking, identity, compute, and storage at scale.
• Proven ability to establish and articulate a vision, set goals, and execute effectively.
• Exceptional ability to communicate complex technical concepts to cross-functional stakeholders.
• Demonstrated success in establishing technical vision and driving measurable outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Coach and empower your engineering team to deliver high levels of technical quality and business impact.
• Actively participate in strategic direction and product decisions for your team.
• Contribute to engineering-wide initiatives as a member of the Playlist engineering management team.
• Make critical architectural decisions that balance speed, quality, and long-term system flexibility.
• Establish clear goals, prioritize resources, and guide team execution through complex, ambiguous challenges.
• Collaborate with Product and other Engineering teams to design and deliver a robust standard Contact solution for various verticals and CRM use cases.

Skills

Leadership

Cloud architecture

Data modeling

Vision & strategy

Cross-functional collaboration

Communication

Strategic prioritization

People management

Tools

AWS

GitHub Actions

Azure Pipelines

Flux

Flagger

C#

Typescript

Job description

About the Company:

At Playlist, life's richest moments happen when people step away from screens to move, connect, explore, and play. We're building the definitive platform for intentional living, connecting people with inspiring experiences in fitness, wellness, and beyond. With popular brands like Mindbody and ClassPass, Playlist empowers businesses and individuals, making it effortless for aspirations to become actions. Join us in reshaping technology's role to foster meaningful, real-world connections.

Our mission is equips wellness entrepreneurs with technology to support thriving businesses and create exceptional experiences. Innovation and curiosity drive our culture, connecting businesses and individuals through cutting-edge solutions. Join us if you're passionate about enhancing wellness through technology.

The Team:

We’re a passionate engineering team, developing and supporting a product where the majority of our users open the app more than 20 times per month. We are faced with an interesting set of technical challenges, and we believe in giving our engineers the autonomy to go and solve them. Much of our team comes from non-traditional computing backgrounds; we know that by bringing together a diverse set of voices we’ll be able to build a better product, and a better company. We care less about what languages or frameworks you know, and care more that you are excited to work with highly impactful teams and be constantly learning. Our engineers work in cross-functional teams that are focused on impact, and movement between teams is encouraged. We work very closely with our brilliant product team to deliver a world class user experience, and ultimately to empower our users to live their fullest, healthiest lives.

The Role You’ll Play

• Coach and Empower your engineering team to deliver high levels of technical quality and business impact.


• Actively participate in strategic direction and product decisions for your team


• Contribute to engineering-wide initiatives as a member of the Playlist engineering management team.


• Make critical architectural decisions that balance speed, quality, and long-term system flexibility.


• Establish clear goals, prioritize resources, and guide team execution through complex, ambiguous challenges


• Collaborate with Product and other Engineering teams to design and deliver a robust standard Contact solution that serves a variety of verticals and CRM use cases.

About the right team member

You are an experienced engineer who has successfully transitioned into a people leader, passionate about building and operating reliable, scalable cloud platforms and developer infrastructure that empower engineering teams. You possess extensive experience in at least one aspect of developing a world-class cloud platform and can effectively manage a high-performing team throughout the entire process.

You’ll thrive in this role with experience in:

• 3+ years of direct management experience with an engineering team of at least 6 members with skills across the stack


• Proven track record and hands-on experience designing, data-modeling, and building production cloud platforms (AWS) at scale.


• Strong grounding in infrastructure-as-code and CI/CD, with operational rigor across incident response, observability, networking, identity, compute, and storage at scale.


• Proven ability to establish and articulate a vision, set goals, and execute effectively.


• Exceptional ability to communicate complex technical concepts to cross-functional stakeholders


• Demonstrated success in establishing technical vision and driving measurable outcomes

Technologies you’ll be working with:

We value adaptability and problem-solving over specific tools, but here’s what you’ll likely work with:

• Amazon Web Services, especially eventing infra (APIGW, SNS/SQS, S3, Postgres, ECS, EventBridge, Kafka)


• CI/CD tools (GitHub Actions, Azure Pipelines, Flux, Flagger)


• Programming Languages (C#, Typescript)

Pay Transparency: It is Playlist’s intent to pay all Team Members competitive wages and salaries that are motivational, fair, and equitable. The goal of Playlist’s compensation program is to be transparent, attract potential employees, meet the needs of all current employees, and encourage Team Members to stay with our organization. Actual compensation packages are based on several factors that are unique to each candidate, including but not limited to skill set, depth of experience, certifications, and specific work location. The base salary range for this position in the United States is $164,250.00 - $219,000. The total compensation package for this position also includes a bonus target and a full benefits package.

The Company is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

We highly value diversity at our company and encourage people of all different backgrounds, experiences, abilities and perspectives to apply. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status, or other protected characteristics.

Note: This description outlines key responsibilities but isn’t intended to cover every task or duty.