Manager, Software Engineering (Platform Services)

1 O.C. Tanner Company; Salt Lake City (UT); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

1 O.C. Tanner Company is seeking an experienced Engineering Manager to lead a 5–10 software engineers team. You will partner with Product, Quality, and cross‑functional teams to deliver secure, scalable platform services and APIs.

In this role, you will guide architectural direction, drive roadmaps, and champion reliability, observability, and operational excellence while mentoring senior engineers and balancing delivery with technical debt.

Qualifications

• 3+ years leading software engineering teams.
• 5+ years delivering complex software systems in a professional environment.
• Experience hiring, coaching, and developing engineers while maintaining high performance.
• Ability to balance product delivery, operational excellence, and technical debt.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems and cloud-native architecture.
• Excellent written and verbal communication with stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Lead, hire, coach, and develop a high-performing team of 5–10 software engineers.
• Partner with Product, QA, and cross-functional teams to plan and operate platform capabilities.
• Guide delivery of secure, scalable platform services and APIs with architects.
• Champion observability, automation, incident response, and security best practices.
• Define technical direction, roadmaps, and modernise systems for future needs.
• Balance new capability delivery with platform reliability and debt reduction.

Skills

Team leadership

People development

Cross-functional collaboration

Technical decision making

Communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in computer science

Tools

Java

Spring Boot

Kafka

GraphQL

SQL

Docker

Kubernetes

Redis

Job description

O.C. Tanner is the global leader in software and services that improve workplace culture through meaningful employee experiences. Our Culture Cloud is a suite of apps designed to enhance the employee experience with strategic recognition, service awards, wellbeing, leadership, and events that help people thrive at work. Our Culture by Design approach provides expert services to organizations looking to create great workplaces. Our global team of 1,500 people hail from 58 countries and speak 62 languages. As programmers, researchers, designers, client professionals and craftspeople we create the tech, tools and awards that connect employees to purpose at thousands of companies. Join us as we help people all over the world thrive at work. Our Platform Services teams build the shared capabilities that enable product teams to move faster and operate reliably. Success in this role requires building strong partnerships across engineering while delivering secure, scalable platform services.

Responsibilities

• Lead, hire, coach, and develop a high‑performing team of 5–10 software engineers, fostering accountability, technical excellence, collaboration, and continuous growth.
• Partner with Product Management, Quality Engineering, and cross‑functional engineering teams to plan, deliver, and operate shared platform capabilities that meet business needs.
• Guide the delivery and evolution of secure, scalable, and reliable platform services and APIs, partnering with Staff Engineers to ensure sound technical architecture.
• Champion operational excellence through observability, automation, incident response, security best practices, and continuous improvement.
• Collaborate with Staff Engineers and Architects to define technical direction, develop technology roadmaps, and modernise systems to meet current and future business needs.
• Balance the delivery of new capabilities with investments in platform reliability, engineering productivity, technical debt reduction, and long‑term maintainability.

Required Experience

• 3+ years leading and developing software engineering teams.
• 5+ years delivering complex software systems in a professional engineering environment.
• Demonstrated ability to hire, coach, and develop engineers while fostering an inclusive, high‑performing team.
• Experience balancing product delivery, operational excellence, and technical debt.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems, cloud‑native architecture, and modern software engineering practices.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to influence technical and business stakeholders.

Preferred Experience

• Experience leading platform services, backend, or shared‑services teams.
• Experience building secure APIs, identity platforms, or other shared engineering services.
• Hands‑on experience with backend and cloud‑native technologies such as Java, Spring Boot, Kafka, GraphQL, SQL, Docker, Kubernetes, Redis, or public cloud platforms.
• Experience with highly available, distributed production systems.
• Experience with transactional systems, messaging, data integration, or financial systems.
• Experience mentoring senior engineers and emerging technical leaders.

Education Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in computer science or related discipline.