Engineering Manager, Core Services

Cursor; New York (NY); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Cursor is seeking a senior backend leader to own the Core Services layer. You will set direction for authentication, SCM integrations, webhook infrastructure, and the reliability of Cursor’s agent workflows. You’ll lead a small, high-impact team, write and review code, and partner with product and infrastructure teams to ensure a rock-solid backend.

Qualifications

• Experience leading backend services teams.
• Proven ability to design scalable authentication architectures.
• Strong background in building API gateways and webhook infrastructures.

Responsibilities

• Own authentication architecture and scalable design.
• Own the agent backend infrastructure for reliability and performance.
• Build and operate a robust webhook server with observability and retry semantics.
• Hardening SCM integrations and ensuring platform reliability.
• Hire and grow the backend and services team.

Skills

Backend leadership

Auth systems

API gateways

Distributed systems

Tools

OAuth

JWTs

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.