Engineering Manager, Search Engine (all genders)

United States Digital Space LLC; United States; Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Distribusion is seeking an Engineering Manager to lead the Search team and shape the product's technical direction. You will steer a senior engineering group, remain hands-on when needed, and drive the architecture for a scalable, low-latency API platform used by major retailers worldwide.

You will own domain health, optimize costs, and ensure performance goals as the platform grows. This role combines leadership with deep technical execution in a dynamic, remote-friendly environment.

Qualifications

• Experienced people leader who has managed senior engineering teams.
• Hands-on engineer who can dive into architecture and code when needed.
• Strong track record building and scaling high-throughput, low-latency distributed systems.

Responsibilities

• Lead and coach an experienced engineering team, ensuring performance and growth.
• Own domain health and ensure systems are robust, scalable, and cost-efficient.
• Drive architecture decisions to support 10x growth while controlling infrastructure costs.
• Stay hands-on with design, code, and system architecture in a complex space.

Skills

People leadership

Hands-on engineering

Backend system design

Performance optimization

Tools

Rust

Go

Job description

About us

Distribusion is the world’s leading ground transportation marketplace and gives travellers seamless access to ground transportation online, from search to ticket purchase. We have built a cutting-edge B2B technology platform that connects bus, rail and ferry operators in 70+ countries with the biggest online retailers including Google Maps and Booking.com.

We are shaping the future of travel and building the largest global network of transport providers and retailers. We are one of the fastest-growing startups in travel, backed by leading venture capital investors including TQ Ventures, Lightrock, Creandum, and Northzone, and are headquartered in Berlin, Germany. Following our recent $80m Series C funding, we are ready to push beyond.

The opportunity

We are looking for an Engineering Manager to lead our Search team.The role entails contributing to the product & technical domains of excellence in the main API product that enables large retailers to seamlessly purchase tickets from bus & rail carriers worldwide.

This is a highly skilled, senior engineering team operating in a highly complex, high-throughput, and low-latency domain.

You will be stepping into an area where performance and cost-efficiency are critical, and your biggest challenge will be technical and strategic. With our platform scaling rapidly, your mission is to prepare our architecture for 10x growth. We need a hands-on leader who still fundamentally thinks of themselves as an Engineer, capable of diving deep into the technical weeds while steering the domain's business goals.

What you will do:

• Manage, lead, and support an experienced team of engineers, providing coaching, alignment, and performance management.

• Take ownership of domain health, ensuring our high-throughput, low-latency systems are robust, scalable, and consistently meeting performance goals.

• Drive profitability and cost optimisation, specifically tackling architectural challenges to scale our system 10x without allowing our current infrastructure and storage costs to multiply exponentially.

• Act as a hands-on technical leader, staying close to the code, system design, and architecture in a highly complex problem space.

Workplace: Berlin & hybrid / EU & Remote

We are a remote-first company with teams located around the Globe. Also, the HQ office is in Berlin, where the team often meets.

Who you are:

• You are an experienced people leader who has successfully managed and supported senior engineering teams.

• You think of yourself as an Engineer at heart; you are highly technical, hands-on, and capable of understanding and guiding deeply complex system architectures.

• You have a proven track record building, maintaining, and scaling high-throughput, low-latency distributed systems.

• You bring a strong business and resource-optimization mindset, with the ability to make strategic architectural decisions that directly impact company profitability and infrastructure costs.

• You have strong programming experience in any modern backend language and are excited to lead new development in Rust or Go. You are also adaptable and willing to learn.

• You show extreme ownership over your domain's health and are comfortable operating in an environment where technical challenges far outweigh basic language-level syntax issues.

• You are fluent in English, both verbally and in writing.

What you can expect:

• Make a global impact. Help shape how millions of people discover and book ground transportation worldwide.

• Own your work. Take responsibility from day one and see the direct impact of your contributions.

• Build with the best tools. We move fast, continuously evolve our tech stack, and invest in modern, efficient solutions.

• Work with industry leaders. Our partners include Booking.com, Google Maps, Amtrak, Deutsche Bahn, Renfe, and SNCF.

• Grow with exceptional people. Join an international team that will challenge, support, and inspire you every day.

• Work your way. Enjoy flexible and remote-friendly working options, relocation opportunities, and plenty of room to grow.

Our hiringteam for this role:Your Talent Partner (TP) and point of contact is Lorena Rebenciuc, and the Hiring Manager (HM) is Bartosz Pranczke.