Engineering Manager, Subscriptions

United States Digital Space LLC; United States; Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Strava is seeking an Engineering Manager for the Subscriptions team in San Francisco with a hybrid model. You will lead backend engineers responsible for the payments and subscription platform, while still coding and shaping architecture.

Grow a small team and own critical systems. You will stay hands-on, drive the roadmap, balance reliability with delivery, and partner with product and engineering leadership on priorities.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional software development experience in backend engineering.
• 2+ years of engineering management experience or demonstrated tech lead experience.
• Proficiency in at least one backend language (Ruby, Java, Scala, Python, or Go).
• Experience with distributed systems and production infrastructure (MySQL, Redis, Kafka, Kubernetes).
• Experience with payments, billing, or subscription systems.

Responsibilities

• Lead a team of backend engineers building the subscriptions and payments backend.
• Own the technical roadmap for payments and subscription infrastructure.
• Stay hands-on in the codebase and make architecture decisions with your team.
• Hire, coach, and retain engineers across multiple levels.

Skills

Backend engineering

Engineering management

Distributed systems

Payments/subscriptions

Ruby/Java/Scala/Python/Go

Code ownership

Tools

MySQL

Redis

Kafka

Kubernetes

Job description

About StravaStrava is the app for active people. With over 200 million athletes in more than 185 countries, it’s more than tracking workouts—it’s where people make progress together, from new habits to new personal bests. No matter your sport or how you track it, the company’s got you covered. Find your crew, crush your goals, and make every effort count. Start your journey with the company today.

Our mission is simple: to motivate people to live their best active lives. We believe in the power of movement to connect and drive people forward.

About This Role:

the company is hiring an Engineering Manager on our Subscriptions team. This team owns the company's payments and subscription platform, both the infrastructure and the user-facing products it powers. We're looking for a technical manager who still writes code and wants to grow a small team of backend engineers while owning some of the company's most critical systems.

This role is based in our San Francisco office with a hybrid model that encourages face-to-face collaboration at least three days a week, while still offering flexibility for remote work.

What You'll Do:

• Lead a team of server engineers building the company's subscription and payments backend, systems that power how millions of athletes subscribe, pay, and manage their subscriptions.

• Own the technical roadmap for payments and subscription infrastructure. You'll partner closely with product and engineering leadership on priorities, balancing platform investment, reliability, and delivery.

• Drive both platform and product work. Your team owns our subscription infrastructure and the user-facing products it powers.

• Stay hands-on in the codebase. You'll write code, own technical designs, and make architecture decisions alongside your team, not just review them.

• Hire, develop, and retain engineers at multiple levels. Coach people through career growth, give direct feedback, and build a team that gets stronger over time.

• Keep payment and subscription services reliable and healthy. You own on-call, incident response, and the operational bar for your team's systems.

• Partner cross-functionally with product, design, accounting, and marketing to identify the highest-leverage work and ship it.

• Treat ownership seriously. Your team's systems handle payments, billing, and subscription state for millions of users. You take reliability, correctness, and incident response personally.

• Grow your engineers. You'll manage people at different career stages and help each one develop, whether that's getting someone to senior or helping a more experienced engineer take on larger technical ownership.

• Build for the long term. You make pragmatic tradeoffs between shipping now and investing in the platform, and you can explain those tradeoffs clearly to partners.

• Stay technical. You're not managing from a distance. You have informed opinions on system design and you can unblock engineers by jumping into the code.

• Make the team better. You care about how the team works, not just what they ship. You'll fix what's slowing people down and build processes that stick.

What You'll Bring to the Team:

• 5+ years of professional software development experience in backend engineering.

• 2+ years of engineering management experience, or demonstrated tech lead experience where you were already doing the job of coaching engineers, driving technical direction, and owning delivery for a team.

• Proficiency in at least one of the company's backend languages (Ruby, Java, Scala, Python, or Go).

• Experience with distributed systems and production infrastructure (MySQL, Redis, Kafka, Kubernetes, or similar).

• Experience with, or genuine interest in, payments, billing, or subscription systems.

• A track record of helping engineers grow through direct feedback, mentorship, and sponsorship.

• We'd love to talk to you about the future of the company's core technologies and your role in developing them

Why Join Us?

Movement brings us together. At the company, we’re building the world’s largest community of active people, helping them stay motivated and achieve their goals.

Our global team is passionate about making movement fun, meaningful, and accessible to everyone. Whether you’re shaping the technology, growing our community, or driving innovation, your work at the company makes an impact.

When you join the company, you’re not just joining a company—you’re joining a movement. If you’re ready to bring your energy, ideas, and drive, let’s build something incredible together.

the company builds software that makes the best part of our athletes’ days even better. Just as we’re deeply committed to unlocking their potential, we’re dedicated to providing a world‑class, inclusive workplace where our employees can grow and thrive, too. We’re backed by Sequoia Capital, TCV, Madrone Partners and Jackson Square Ventures, and we’re expanding in order to exceed the needs of our growing community of global athletes. Our culture reflects our community. We are continuously striving to hire and engage teammates from all backgrounds, experiences and perspectives because we know we are a stronger team together.

the company is an equal opportunity employer. In keeping with the values of the company, we make all employment decisions including hiring, evaluation, termination, promotional and training opportunities, without regard to race, religion, color, sex, age, national origin, ancestry, sexual orientation, physical handicap, mental disability, medical condition, disability, gender or identity or expression, pregnancy or pregnancy‑related condition, marital status, height and/or weight.

We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodation.

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