Engineering Manager, Data Platform

LaunchDarkly; Oakland (CA); On-site; USD 192,000 - 264,000; Full time

Job summary

LaunchDarkly is seeking an Engineering Manager to lead the Data Platform team, shaping the high-throughput data backbone behind our main products. You’ll guide a technically deep group building and operating systems that ingest, process, and serve real-time and batch data powering experimentation, metrics, observability, and more.

Working primarily in Go and Python, you’ll tackle distributed-systems challenges using Kinesis, Airflow, Athena, and Iceberg on S3, ClickHouse, Elasticsearch,

Qualifications

• 8+ years in software engineering with leadership experience.
• Experience owning high-throughput, reliability-critical production systems.
• Strong distributed-systems fundamentals and ability to guide technical tradeoffs.
• Proven ability to partner with Product Management to translate business goals into engineering plans.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop a team of backend engineers, providing coaching and growth opportunities.
• Own delivery, correctness, and resilience of Data Platform production systems.
• Collaborate with Product Management and consuming teams to scope and sequence roadmap work.
• Serve as primary communicator for Data Platform with engineering leadership and customers.
• Drive operational excellence: reliability, observability, cost, incident response, on-call health.
• Build norms that promote collaboration and reduce silos and bus factor.
• Participate in hiring to grow the team and raise the engineering bar.

Skills

Team leadership

Distributed systems

Go/Python

Production systems

Stakeholder collaboration

Hiring and mentoring

Tools

Go

Python

Kinesis

Airflow

Iceberg

Elasticsearch

Terraform

AWS

Datadog

Job description

We are seeking an Engineering Manager to lead LaunchDarkly’s Data Platform team and help shape the high-throughput data backbone behind our most important products. As Engineering Manager, you’ll lead a technically deep team building and operating the systems that ingest, process, and serve the real-time and batch data powering Experimentation, Metrics, Observability, Release Guardian, AgentControl, and Data Export.

Working primarily in Go and Python, your team tackles ambitious distributed-systems challenges with technologies including Kinesis, Airflow, Athena, and Iceberg on S3, ClickHouse, Elasticsearch, Terraform, AWS, and Datadog. From evolving real-time analytics and context data to strengthening streaming and batch pipelines, you’ll guide the platform that turns vast volumes of events into reliable, customer-facing product experiences while partnering across Core Engineering and product teams to make data faster, more resilient, and more useful for every LaunchDarkly customer.

Responsibilities:

Lead and develop a team of backend engineers, providing coaching, feedback, and career growth opportunities

Own the delivery, correctness, and resilience of Data Platform's production systems, including Tier 0 ingestion endpoints and the pipelines and data stores behind them

Partner with Product Management and consuming engineering teams to scope, estimate, and sequence roadmap work, making tradeoffs in real time

Act as the primary communicator and point of contact for Data Platform with engineering leadership, partner teams, and customers

Drive operational excellence: reliability, observability, cost, incident response, and on-call health

Build team working norms that promote collaboration, reduce silos and bus factor, and keep engineers engaged

Participate in hiring to grow the team and raise the engineering bar

Qualifications:

8+ years of experience in software engineering, with at least 2 years managing a team of backend or infrastructure engineers

Experience owning high-throughput, reliability-critical production systems such as event ingestion, streaming or batch pipelines, or large analytical data stores

Strong distributed-systems fundamentals and the judgment to guide technical tradeoffs with senior engineers

Proven ability to partner with Product Management to translate business goals into engineering plans with reliable estimates

Track record of coaching and developing engineers, including performance management, career growth planning, and technical mentorship

Strong communication skills in a distributed, cross-time-zone environment

Familiarity with observability practices (metrics, tracing, alerting, structured logging) and comfort leading production incident response

Experience with Go or Python, and with technologies such as Kafka or Kinesis, ClickHouse, Airflow, Athena or Iceberg, Elasticsearch, and Terraform is a plus

Pay:

Target pay ranges based on Geographic Zones* for Level 2:

• Zone 1: San Francisco/Bay Area or NYC Metropolitan Area, Boston, Seattle - $191,800 - $263,670**
• Zone 2: Irvine, LA, Monterey, Santa Barbara, Santa Rosa, Austin, Portland, Philadelphia, Chicago - $172,600 - $237,270**
• Zone 3: All other US locations - $163,000 - $224,070**
• All Zones Inclusive of a 10% Bonus Target

LaunchDarkly operates from a place of high trust and transparency; we are happy to state the pay range for our open roles to best align with your needs. Exact compensation may vary based on skills, experience, and location.

*Within the United States, our geographic pay zones are defined by counties surrounding major metropolitan areas.
**Restricted Stock Units (RSUs), health, vision, and dental insurance, and mental health benefits in addition to salary.

About LaunchDarkly:

Modern software delivery was supposed to be the foundation for a thriving digital business but reality has proven otherwise. Slow, inefficient development cycles, costly outages, and fragmented customer experiences are preventing developers from building their best software. The LaunchDarkly platform helps developers innovate on new features faster while protecting them with a safety valve to instantly rewind when things go wrong. Developers can target product experiences to any customer segment and maximize the business impact of every feature. And by gradually rolling out new application components, they escape nightmare "big-bang" technology migrations.

The LaunchDarkly platform was built to guide engineers to the next frontier of DevOps by:

• Improving the velocity and stability of software releases, without the fear of end customer outages
• Delivering targeted experiences by easily personalizing features to customer cohorts
• Maximizing the business impact of every feature through the ability to experiment and optimize
• Coordinating the release and optimization of software to provide consistent experiences across mobile platforms and device types
• Improving the effectiveness and productivity of engineering teams, by providing insights into engineering cadence and stability

At LaunchDarkly, we believe in the power of teams. We're building a team that is humble, open, collaborative, respectful and kind. We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. LD invites any applicant to review our written Affinitive Action Plan. To do so, contact People Ops at [e-mail] .

Your safety matters to us. To protect yourself from potential scams, LaunchDarkly recruiters will only contact you from @launchdarkly.com email addresses or via LinkedIn from "Verified Recruiter" accounts. Be cautious of emails from other domains. Legitimate LaunchDarkly recruiters will never ask for money, fees, or banking information before making a job offer. LaunchDarkly will never make a job offer without conducting a formal interview process. Our interview process does not involve asking detailed questions by email. If you are ever unsure about a communication that you receive, don't click any links—visit Careers | LaunchDarkly directly for confirmed job openings and links to apply.
Please notify us of any fraudulent representation by sending an email to [e-mail] .

Interested in building your career at LaunchDarkly? Get future opportunities sent straight to your email.