Engineering Manager, Core Services

Cursor; California (MO); On-site; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Cursor seeks a leader for the Core Services team to own the authentication, webhook, and backend systems powering agent workflows. You will design scalable auth, oversee the agent backbone, and partner with product and infrastructure to ensure a rock-solid backend.

You will guide a small, high-impact team, write and review code, and mentor engineers while aligning with Cursor's vision of developer-focused tooling at scale.

Qualifications

• Experience leading engineering teams that own backend services.
• Experience with authentication/authorization frameworks (OAuth, JWTs, RBAC) is a plus.
• Strong focus on reliability and performance of complex multi-step systems.
• Proven ability to build clean abstractions and well-defined service contracts.

Responsibilities

• Own authentication architecture and scalable auth design.
• Oversee agent workflows infrastructure and performance.
• Build robust webhook server with high throughput and observability.
• Harden SCM integrations and provider abstractions to stay reliable.
• Drive end-to-end agent reliability from user action to response.
• Hire, coach, and develop backend engineers.

Skills

Auth systems

Distributed systems

Backend services

Leadership

Code review

Job description

Our mission is to automate coding. The first step in our journey is to build the best tool for professional programmers, using a combination of inventive research, design, and engineering. Our organization is very flat, and our team is small and talent dense. We particularly like people who are truth-seeking, passionate, and creative. We enjoy spirited debate, crazy ideas, and shipping code.

About the Role

You will lead the Core Services team at Cursor, owning the critical shared services that sit between our product surfaces and the infrastructure layer: auth, webhooks, and the backend systems that power agent workflows. Cursor is redefining how developers write code, and your team is what makes that possible at scale. You'll build and operate the systems that every product team depends on, ensuring they are reliable, well-abstracted, and ready for whatever comes next.

You'll set technical direction for authentication, SCM integrations, webhook infrastructure, and end-to-end agent reliability, driving the quality of the services layer that the entire company builds on top of. You'll lead a small, high-impact team, write and review code, and partner closely with product and infrastructure teams to ensure Cursor's backend is rock-solid.

What you'll do

• Owning authentication: designing and implementing a scalable auth architecture that secures one of the most widely-used developer tools in the world.

• Powering the agent backend: owning the infrastructure behind Cursor's agent workflows, optimizing for end-to-end performance and reliability as agents become central to the developer experience.

• Building a robust webhook server: handling high-throughput event delivery with proper retry semantics, dead-letter queues, and observability so external integrations just work.

• Hardening SCM integrations: building resilient abstractions over source control providers so Cursor stays rock-solid regardless of third-party conditions.

• Driving end-to-end agent reliability: partnering with the client and inference teams to improve the full path from user action to agent response.

• Hiring and growing the team: sourcing, interviewing, and closing top backend and services talent, while developing your engineers through coaching, mentorship, and high-leverage project assignments.

You may be a fit if

• You have led engineering teams building and operating critical backend services, especially auth systems, API gateways, or webhook infrastructure.

• You've worked on distributed systems and have strong opinions on reliability and performance of complex multi-step systems.

• You care deeply about clean abstractions, well-defined service contracts, and making it easy for other engineers to build on top of your work.

• You have strong software engineering fundamentals and enjoy owning the full lifecycle of production services.

• Experience with authentication/authorization frameworks (OAuth, JWTs, RBAC), event-driven architectures, or building developer-facing platform services is a plus.

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