Engineering Manager, Infrastructure / Platform - speak

Polluxa, Inc.; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 190,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Speak seeks an experienced engineering leader to build and grow a high-performing team in San Francisco. You will steer technical direction, coach engineers, and ship projects while maintaining quality and reliability.

You will collaborate with Product and Design, drive infra improvements, and foster a culture of ownership. In-person presence 3–4 days a week in SF is expected, with a global organizational context and rapid growth.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of IC software engineering on fast-paced, high-performance teams.
• 4+ years of direct team management experience.
• Strong backend, systems, platform/infra, or performance background.
• Deeply technical with focus on shipping and tooling in AI-enabled environments.

Responsibilities

• Leading and managing a team of engineers while setting strong output and productivity expectations.
• Contributing technically, through coaching and leadership as well as direct contribution (shipping smaller projects, bugfixes, improving the agent environment).
• Driving engineering transformation by identifying manual work, bottlenecks, and gaps, and closing them.
• Setting pace and driving velocity while maintaining a high quality bar.
• Collaborating with Product/Design and other functions to execute effectively in the AI era.
• Proactively improving shared infrastructure, tooling, and systems for the org.
• Building and maintaining a healthy, high-performing team culture.

Skills

Software engineering

Team leadership

Backend systems

Performance optimization

High velocity execution

Job description

What you'll be doing

• Leading and managing a team of engineers while setting strong output and productivity expectations
• Contributing technically, both through coaching and leadership as well as directly contributing: e.g. shipping smaller projects, bugfixes, and improving the agent environment using coding agents
• Driving your team's agentic engineering transformation: constantly asking what's still being done manually, identifying slowdowns and roadblocks, and actively closing the gap
• Setting the pace and driving velocity while articulating and setting a high quality bar
• Collaborating closely and effectively with partner functions like Product/Design/many more to execute effectively in the AI era
• Proactively pushing for changes to shared infrastructure, tooling, and systems that help the broader engineering org become more agentic
• Building and maintaining a healthy, high-performing team culture

What we're looking for

• 8+ years of IC software engineering experience on fast-paced, high performance teams
• 4+ years of direct team management experience
• Strong backend, systems, platform/infra, or performance background
• Deeply technical and building faster than ever with coding agents
• High agency but low ego
• Strong conviction that 10x engineering output is possible with agentic tools and practices
• Proven ability to drive velocity, hold a high quality bar, and give direct performance feedback
• Excited about working in-person in San Francisco at least 3-4 days per week

Nice to haves

• Background in AI-native products and systems
• Track record of driving org-wide developer productivity or tooling initiatives

WHY WORK AT SPEAK

• Join a fantastic, tight-knit team at the right time: we're growing very quickly, we've most recently raised our Series C from some of the top investors in the valley, and we've achieved product-market fit in our initial markets. You'd join at a magical time when a single person could significantly change the course of the company.
• Do your life's work with people you’ll love working with: we care strongly about our craft and want every person at Speak to feel like they're growing every day. We believe in the idea that working with people you both enjoy and have respect for makes everything better. We hire thoughtfully and only work with people we admire deeply.
• Global in nature: We're live in over 40 countries and launching in a number of new markets soon. We have dedicated offices in San Francisco, Ljubljana, Seoul, Tokyo, and Taipei, and you’ll have

the opportunity

to talk to users in each of these regions on a regular basis as well as travel.