Engineering Manager (Platform)

distributed-spectrum; New York (NY); On-site; USD 220,000 - 300,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Above-market salary and equity package

Early Series A equity

Excellent health, dental, and vision

401(k) match – up to 4%

Flexible PTO

Daily office lunches in NYC

Job summary

Distributed Spectrum in New York City is seeking an Engineering Manager (Platform) to lead our platform engineering function, building shared services, data paths, tooling, and technical foundations that shape customer experience.

This is a staff‑director level role for someone who is full‑stack but systems aware, who writes and reviews real code, makes decisive technical calls, and leads a small, high‑ownership team.

Qualifications

• Strong systems-thinking with hands-on engineering across the stack.
• Experience leading platform teams building shared services and data paths.
• Ability to translate customer deployments into actionable plans.
• Proven track record coaching engineers and delivering reliable software.

Responsibilities

• Lead the architecture and evolution of the platform and shared services.
• Own data paths from sensor processing to customer-facing apps.
• Make cross-stack technical decisions and set deployment strategies.
• Coach and develop engineers while hiring for the team.
• Drive execution and align with company goals under ambiguity.

Skills

Systems thinking

Full-stack engineering

Technical leadership

Hands-on coding

Decision making

Team coaching

Tools

Python

Go

C++

Rust

TypeScript

React

Linux

Job description

DS creates systems that power the next generation of radio spectrum intelligence. We collect radio data from all over the world, train neural networks to decipher it, and run them on the smallest chips we can. We’re solving a new, technically hard problem where nothing from other fields works out of the box, and along the way, we’ve built our own stack from scratch, including entirely new embedding model architectures, custom GPU kernels, and much more.

Joining DS means owning major parts of a fast-growing AI research organization, joining a collaborative, talent-dense team with decades of experience in probabilistic ML, accelerated computing, embedded systems, and signal theory, and growing your career in the areas that interest you. You’ll fit in if you want to come to work for the problem itself and don’t want to choose between technical rigor, business value, and real-world impact.

We work with high ownership and trust, and we do it together in the office 5 days/week.

The Role

We are hiring an Engineering Manager (Platform) to lead our platform engineering function — building the shared services, data paths, tooling, and technical foundations that directly shape customer experience. This is a staff‑director level role for someone who is full‑stack but systems aware. You write and review real code. You make decisive technical calls. You lead a small, high‑ownership team. And you understand enough about how networks, operating systems, and real‑world constraints work to build software that behaves reliably when things get hard.

Our product operates where software meets the physical world. That means decisions about data paths, pub/sub architecture, map rendering, offline behavior, and networking surface directly in the customer experience. The best person for this role doesn’t just work above these constraints — they understand why they exist.

What You’ll Own

• The architecture and evolution of our platform and shared services layer
• The data path from sensor processing through to customer‑facing web and Android experiences
• Technical decisions across the stack — from library selection to system design to deployment
• Translating customer deployment learnings into a clear, decisive development planEngineering practices that raise the bar for quality, reliability, and execution
• A small team of engineers you’ll coach, develop, and hire alongside

How You’ll Lead — This is an engineer‑first, people‑leader‑second role

• Stay deeply involved in system design and technical decision‑making
• Make decisive calls on the tech — what tools we use, how we build the data path, how we implement pub/sub, what map library we reach for
• Synthesize feedback from customer deployments into actionable development priorities
• Coach and develop engineers while remaining a strong technical reference point
• Own company goals and drive execution through ambiguity

What Success Looks Like

• A platform that enables faster prototyping and clearer customer feedback loops
• Systems that behave predictably under real‑world constraints
• Engineers who are growing in technical judgment and ownership
• Technical decisions that scale across the organization

About You

You are someone who:

• Thinks in systems, not just frameworks
• Has strong full‑stack engineering experience and can make confident calls across the stack
• Understands how operating systems, memory, and networks affect real software behavior— even if you haven’t spent your career writing embedded code
• Can take messy customer deployment feedback and turn it into a clear technical plan
• Is comfortable leading through ambiguity and startup‑paced change
• Wants to stay hands‑on while growing engineers and influencing the broader org

Technical Background

You’ve worked meaningfully with:

• Python and/or a systems‑aware backend language (Go, C++, Rust exposure valued)
• Typescript/Javascript & React or comparable frontend frameworks
• Linux‑based systems
• Networking fundamentals — DNS, DHCP, pub/sub, data flow, queues
• Backend service architecture — APIs, microservices, data pipelines
• Build systems, CI/CD, packaging, and deployment

You understand:

• How to design and build reliable data paths through a system
• How systems fail under memory or networking pressure
• How to make software that doesn’t assume constant connectivity
• How to evaluate and select libraries, tools, and architectural patterns decisively

This Role is Likely Not For You If…

• You’ve only worked on abstract, cloud‑native systems and haven’t thought about real‑world constraints
• You want to move fully away from hands‑on technical work
• You prefer narrowly scoped ownership over end‑to‑end responsibility
• You’re uncomfortable making decisive technical calls in ambiguous environments
• You’ve never led engineers, regardless of team size

Who Thrives at Distributed Spectrum

• Fast learners over specific backgrounds – We care more about how quickly you can pick up new skills than where you’ve worked before.
• Intellectual honesty – The right answer matters more than being right. You challenge assumptions, test ideas, and pivot when needed.
• Adaptability – We’re organized, but sometimes things change quickly. You find a way to make it work and balance short‑term deliverables with long‑term goals.
• Ownership of outcomes – You optimize your own time, focus on what matters to deliver quickly, and cut out inefficiencies.
• Not building in a vacuum – You stay connected to the rest of our teams and our customers to make sure all the pieces fit together.

What We Offer

• Above‑market salary, equity, and benefits package
• Early Series A equity
• Excellent health, dental, and vision coverage
• 401(k) match – up to 4% of your salary
• Flexible PTO
• Daily office lunches in NYC

ITAR Requirements To conform to U.S. Government technology export regulations, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) you must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State. Learn more about the ITAR here.