Engineering Manager, Music

Spotify AB; New York (NY); On-site; USD 164,000 - 235,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Six months paid parental leave

401(k) retirement plan

Monthly meal allowance

23 paid days off

Paid flexible holidays

Paid sick leave

Learning opportunities (GreenHouse)

Job summary

Spotify is seeking a Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Personalization, Muse, to lead a software engineering team focused on the Rights DB and related data pipelines. You will mentor engineers, collaborate with product and legal teams, and drive the technical roadmap for a centralized rights ownership repository.

You will work on scalable systems, data quality, and platform migrations while aligning with regulatory requirements and the company’s rights management strategy.

Qualifications

• 1+ years of experience managing software engineering teams in a product-focused, cross-functional setting.
• 5+ years of hands-on engineering experience (web, backend, or full-stack).
• Experience with web technologies, distributed systems, or cloud platforms.
• Familiarity with content/IP-related domains and legal/compliance considerations.

Responsibilities

• Manage and mentor a team of 7–8 engineers building RightsDB, the centralized database for rights data.
• Support RightsDB work including Publishing Deny List (PDL) and ingesting UGC rights via DDEX.
• Provide technical guidance to help team members grow and align with goals.
• Collaborate with product, design, legal, and rights operations to define scope and priorities.
• Ensure alignment between business needs and technical implementation; guide squad strategy.
• Oversee platform operations including performance, security, and incident response.
• Foster a culture of experimentation, ownership, and continuous improvement.
• Work with internal teams to evolve Spotify Rights Center in line with regulatory needs.

Skills

Team management

Hands-on engineering

Web technologies

Distributed systems

Cloud platforms

Stakeholder management

Data pipelines

DDEX

Tools

DDEX

RightsDB

Job description

The Rights Systems team is driving the technical foundations of a step-change for Spotify’s business by enabling the distribution of new forms of content across the platform. This challenge involves detection of rights-protected intellectual property and facilitating rightsholder and creator management of both the rights-protected IP and the secondary content.

The journey ahead will present the team with the chance to collaborate with teams across the company (Content Platform, Financial Engineering, Label Partnership, Licensing, and others) in order to create and present novel content datasets to end-users. As the product matures, the team will stretch as they scale to broader use cases and a larger user base.

Being a cornerstone of the company’s catalog maximization strategy, the rights systems solution space will be an area of investment and growth for the company over the next 2–5 years.

What You'll Do

• Manage and support a team of 7–8 engineers developing the core RightsDB, a new foundational database that serves as a centralized repository for copyright and rightsholder ownership data
• Support ongoing RightsDB work, including enabling new video content to more automatically make its way to platform by implementing a Publishing Deny List (PDL) and ingesting UGC rights via DDEX
• Provide mentorship, coaching, and technical guidance to team members to help them identify their growth path and develop their skills aligned to their goals
• Foster a positive, inclusive, and growth-oriented culture where individuals feel empowered and supported in their careers
• Partner closely with the product manager and cross-functional stakeholders (design, legal, rights operations) to define scope, roadmap, and priorities
• Ensure alignment between business needs and technical implementation and establish squad technical strategy to support healthy delivery cycles
• Manage timelines and ensure reliable, timely feature delivery while scaling project ownership across the team
• Oversee platform operations including performance, security, incident response, and on-call rotations
• Encourage a culture of experimentation, continuous improvement, and technical ownership
• Collaborate with internal teams, including legal, rights operations, and content, to ensure the Spotify Rights Center evolves with regulatory needs and continues to meet expectations of rightsholders

Who You Are

• You have 1+ years of experience managing software engineering teams, ideally in a product-focused and cross-functional setting
• You have 5+ years of hands-on engineering experience, including web, backend, or full-stack development
• You have experience working with web technologies, distributed systems, or cloud platforms
• You are comfortable managing stakeholders from both technical and non-technical backgrounds
• You have experience delivering outcomes in a highly collaborative environment
• You care deeply about user experience, data accuracy, and system integrity, especially in legal or IP-sensitive domains
• You have a growth mindset and a passion for building scalable systems
• You support and empower your team to do their best work
• You have familiarity with the music or media rights domain or similar IP-centric industries
• You have familiarity with content management systems, legal compliance platforms, or large-scale data pipelines
• You have familiarity with platform migrations, user access control models, or third-party integrations

Where You'll Be

• We offer you the flexibility to work where you work best! For this role, you can be within the North Americas region as long as we have a work location.
• This team operates within the Eastern Standard time zone for collaboration.

Learn about life at Spotify

The United States base range for this position is $164,448 –$234,926 USD, plus equity. The benefits available for this position include health insurance, six-month paid parental leave, 401(k) retirement plan, monthly meal allowance, 23 paid days off, paid flexible holidays, and paid sick leave. These ranges may be modified in the future.

Spotify is an equal opportunity employer. You are welcome at Spotify for who you are, no matter where you come from, what you look like, or what’s playing in your headphones. Our platform is for everyone, and so is our workplace. The more voices we have represented and amplified in our business, the more we will all thrive, contribute, and be forward-thinking! So bring us your personal experience, your perspectives, and your background. It’s in our differences that we will find the power to keep revolutionizing the way the world listens.

At Spotify, we are passionate about inclusivity and making sure our entire recruitment process is accessible to everyone. We have ways to request reasonable accommodations during the interview process and help assist in what you need. If you need accommodations at any stage of the application or interview process, please let us know - we’re here to support you in any way we can.

Extensive learning opportunities, through our dedicated team, GreenHouse.

Flexible share incentives letting you choose how you share in our success.

Global parental leave, six months off - for all new parents.

All The Feels, our employee assistance program and self-care hub.

Flexible public holidays, swap days off according to your values and beliefs.

Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Personalization, Muse