Engineering Manager, Community

The New York Times; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 152,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

The New York Times is seeking an Engineering Manager to lead our Community team within the News Product mission. This role guides the end-to-end reader engagement experience—comments, conversations and other interactions on web and native apps—while building scalable backend services and internal tools for editors and moderators.

Based in New York City with a hybrid schedule (2 days in office), you will shape the team's technical vision, uphold trust, safety and performance, and partner with

Qualifications

• 2+ years of experience as an Engineering Manager leading high‑functioning engineering teams.
• Experience managing cross‑disciplinary engineers and overseeing mission‑critical production operations for user‑facing systems.
• Prior experience as a senior or staff‑level engineer building and operating backend services and/or native app features in a production environment.
• Experience collaborating with product, design and data partners on roadmap planning and delivery.

Responsibilities

• Lead a cross‑platform team of engineers working across backend services, web and native clients that power comments, conversations and other reader engagement experiences.
• Guide the technical vision and roadmap for expanding Community features beyond traditional comments into new formats and surfaces, in partnership with product, design and newsroom partners.
• Oversee the development of high‑availability backend services alongside the internal tools and UIs that moderators, editors and product teams use to manage reader participation.
• Ensure the reliability, performance and safety of Community systems, including incident response, post‑incident reviews and follow‑up work for highly visible reader experiences.
• Partner with Product, Design and Data counterparts to prioritize investments that balance immediate operational needs (for example, moderation and safety) with longer‑term platform modernization and experimentation.
• Contribute to the broader News Product mission by leading cross‑team technical or cultural programs. You will also represent the Community team in high‑level technical discussions, where you identify risks and make calculated tradeoffs between feature velocity, reader safety, and platform stability.
• Demonstrate support and understanding of our value of journalistic independence and a strong commitment to our mission to seek the truth and help people understand the world.

Skills

Engineering Management

Cross-disciplinary leadership

Production operations oversight

Backend services

Web & native apps

Roadmap planning

Team collaboration

AI-assisted workflows

Moderation pipelines

Trust & Safety domain knowledge

Tools

React

Node.js

Golang

AWS

GCP

Event-driven architectures

Observability tooling

Job description

The mission of The New York Times is to seek the truth and help people understand the world. That means independent journalism is at the heart of all we do as a company. It’s why we have a world-renowned newsroom that sends journalists to report on the ground from nearly 160 countries. It’s why we focus deeply on how our readers will experience our journalism, from print to audio to a world-class digital and app destination. And it’s why our business strategy centers on making journalism so good that it’s worth paying for.

About the Role: The New York Times is looking for an Engineering Manager to lead our Community team within the News Product mission. This team is responsible for the end‑to‑end experience of our reader participation features, including commenting, conversations and other forms of reader engagement on web and native apps. We build both the scalable backend services that power these experiences and the internal tools that allow our newsroom and moderation partners to steward safe, productive discussions.

As we evolve how readers participate in and around our journalism, this team will lead the expansion from traditional article comments into richer, more conversational experiences across platforms. As an Engineering Manager, you will not just maintain a set of services. You will shape the team and the technology required to support new participation models. Additionally, you will uphold our standards for trust, safety, and performance.

You will oversee a diverse technical stack ranging from low‑latency backend integrations and moderation pipelines to the user‑facing tools that make our Community platform powerful and intuitive for editors, moderators and internal partners. You will join an organization that values empathy, collaboration, transparency and diversity.

This is a hybrid role based in our New York City headquarters. You can typically expect to come into the office 2 days/week.

Responsibilities

• Lead a cross‑platform team of engineers working across backend services, web and native clients that power comments, conversations and other reader engagement experiences.
• Guide the technical vision and roadmap for expanding Community features beyond traditional comments into new formats and surfaces, in partnership with product, design and newsroom partners.
• Oversee the development of high‑availability backend services alongside the internal tools and UIs that moderators, editors and product teams use to manage reader participation.
• Ensure the reliability, performance and safety of Community systems, including incident response, post‑incident reviews and follow‑up work for highly visible reader experiences.
• Partner with Product, Design and Data counterparts to prioritize investments that balance immediate operational needs (for example, moderation and safety) with longer‑term platform modernization and experimentation.
• Contribute to the broader News Product mission by leading cross‑team technical or cultural programs. You will also represent the Community team in high‑level technical discussions, where you identify risks and make calculated tradeoffs between feature velocity, reader safety, and platform stability.
• Demonstrate support and understanding of our value of journalistic independence and a strong commitment to our mission to seek the truth and help people understand the world.

Basic Qualifications

• 2+ years of experience as an Engineering Manager leading high‑functioning engineering teams.
• Experience managing cross‑disciplinary engineers (for example, backend, web, native or DevOps) and overseeing mission‑critical production operations for user‑facing systems.
• Prior experience as a senior or staff‑level engineer building and operating backend services and/or native app features in a production environment.
• Experience collaborating with product, design and data partners on roadmap planning and delivery.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience applying AI‑assisted or agentic workflows in engineering, such as AI‑augmented moderation, analytics or developer tooling for Community systems.
• Experience with user‑generated content platforms, commenting systems or moderation pipelines in Community or Trust & Safety domains.
• Experience with modern web and app stacks includes React and Node.js, Golang, and/or native mobile frameworks. Additionally, it involves cloud platforms, such as AWS or GCP. This experience also encompasses event‑driven architectures and observability tooling.

Compensation & Benefits

The annual base pay range for this role is between: $152,000 – $190,000 USD. For roles in the U.S., dependent on your role, you may be eligible for variable pay, such as an annual bonus and restricted stock. Benefits may include medical, dental and vision benefits, Flexible Spending Accounts (F.S.A.s), a company‑matching 401(k) plan, paid vacation, paid sick days, paid parental leave, tuition reimbursement and professional development programs. For roles outside of the U.S., information on benefits will be provided during the interview process.

Equal Opportunity Employer

The New York Times Company is committed to being the world’s best source of independent, reliable and quality journalism. To do so, we embrace a diverse workforce that has a broad range of backgrounds and experiences across our ranks, at all levels of the organization. We encourage people from all backgrounds to apply.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and do not discriminate on the basis of an individual's sex, age, race, color, creed, national origin, alienage, religion, marital status, pregnancy, sexual orientation or affectionate preference, gender identity and expression, disability, genetic trait or predisposition, carrier status, citizenship, veteran or military status and other personal characteristics protected by law. All applications will receive consideration for employment without regard to legally protected characteristics. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)’s Know Your Rights Poster is available here.

The New York Times Company will provide reasonable accommodations as required by applicable federal, state, and/or local laws. Individuals seeking an accommodation for the application or interview process should email [e-mail]. Emails sent for unrelated issues, such as following up on an application, will not receive a response.