Software Engineering Manager, Software Platform

Muonspace; San Jose (CA); Hybrid; USD 210,000 - 234,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity grant

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

401(k) retirement plan

Paid vacation and holidays

Parental leave

Job summary

Muonspace is hiring an Software Engineering Manager to lead the Software Platform team in San Jose. This hybrid role requires on-site presence three days a week to scale and mature a product-minded platform for Muon’s developers and production systems.

You will hire, guide, and coach a six-person team, shaping roadmaps and ensuring reliable, scalable services while partnering with cross-functional teams across engineering, security, and IT.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of software engineering experience and 3+ years managing software engineering teams.
• Direct experience managing a platform/infrastructure/DevOps/SRE team.
• Strong background in distributed systems, backend services, or platform development.
• Hands-on depth with Kubernetes, Terraform, and AWS.
• Experience supporting production systems with SLOs, on-call, incident response, postmortems.
• Track record treating internal platforms as products with developers as customers.
• Experience running a DevOps/SRE function within a platform team.
• Ability to define technical direction with roadmap ownership and stakeholder alignment.
• Strong communication and cross-functional partnership skills.
• Ability to set ownership boundaries and partner with product teams without overstepping

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor, and grow the Software Platform team; manage hiring and performance.
• Define team goals and technical roadmaps aligned with company priorities.
• Ensure reliability, scalability, and performance of production services.
• Translate needs into clear requirements and technical specifications with stakeholders.
• Promote design reviews, testing, and observability best practices.
• Manage team capacity, staffing, and growth, including coaching.
• Foster a culture of technical ownership and pragmatic delivery.
• Build feedback loops with developer-customers and define ownership boundaries

Skills

Leadership

Communication

Team management

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

BS in Computer Science or related field

MS in Computer Science (advantage)

Tools

Kubernetes

Terraform

AWS

Bazel

Job description

About the role

Muon seeks an Software Engineering Manager to lead our Software Platform team. This team builds and operates the paved roads (CI/CD, Kubernetes, Terraform, Bazel, AWS, IAM, data infrastructure, and more) that underpin both our internal tooling and the production systems behind customer-facing products such as Muon Mission Command.

The Software Platform team is critical to the overall growth and success of Muon's software engineering organization: as the number of product teams, services, and customers expands, the leverage this team creates, through reduced cognitive load, eliminated toil, and self-service Golden Paths, directly determines how fast the rest of engineering can move. This manager will inherit a team of six engineers, and will be responsible for both scaling that team to meet current demand and evolving it into a product-minded platform organization whose customers are Muon's own developers.

This position is hybrid and requires working on-site in our San Jose, CA office three days per week.

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor, and grow the Software Platform team. Own hiring, performance management, coaching, and team composition for a growing platform organization. Actively recruit engineers to meet the demands of a rapidly scaling software department.
• Define team goals, and technical roadmaps that align with companies priorities.
• Ensure reliability, scalability, and performance of mission‑critical services operating in production.
• Work with cross‑functional stakeholders to translate mission needs into clear requirements and technical specifications.
• Drive engineering best practices including design reviews, code quality, testing, and observability.
• Manage team capacity, staffing, and growth, including hiring, coaching, and performance development.
• Promote a culture of technical ownership, continuous improvement, and pragmatic delivery.
• Build feedback loops with developer-customers, prioritize based on real friction, and hold clear ownership boundaries so product teams retain accountability for their applications.

Qualifications

• BS/MS in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field OR equivalent industry experience.
• 5+ years of software engineering experience and 3+ years managing software engineering teams building and operating production systems.
• Direct experience managing a platform, infrastructure, DevOps, or SRE team, including responsibility for hiring, performance management, coaching senior engineers, and shaping team composition.
• Strong technical background in distributed systems, backend services, or platform development, with hands‑on depth in Kubernetes, Terraform, and AWS.
• Demonstrated experience supporting production systems with real uptime, reliability, and performance requirements (SLOs, on‑call, incident response, postmortems).
• Track record of establishing paved roads / Golden Paths and treating internal platforms as products, with developers as customers.
• Experience running a DevOps or SRE function embedded within a platform team (rather than as a separate silo), consistent with our team model.
• Experience defining technical direction and driving execution through a team, including prioritization, roadmap ownership, and stakeholder alignment.
• Strong communication skills and comfort partnering with cross‑functional stakeholders across engineering, security, and IT/information systems.
• Ability to hold clear ownership boundaries, comfortable saying "no" to work that belongs to product teams while still being a great partner to them.

Nice-to-have Skills

• Hands‑on experience with Bazel or another large-scale monorepo build system.
• Experience leading data engineering or data platform work as part of a broader platform team.
• Familiarity with Cloudflare, Artifactory, IAM/Okta, InfluxDB, or Grafana‑based observability stacks.
• Experience scaling a platform team through a period of rapid organizational growth.
• Experience partnering closely with information security teams on platform-level controls (IAM, secrets management, supply chain).
• Familiarity with aerospace, satellite operations, or other high‑reliability / mission‑critical domains.

Salary and Benefits

The salary range for this role is $210,000 – $234,000, plus a competitive equity grant and comprehensive benefits package. Final compensation will be determined based on skills, qualifications, experience, and geographic location as assessed during the interview process. In addition to salary, full‑time employees receive equity compensation as well as benefits including medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k) retirement plan, short‑ and long‑term disability, and life insurance. We also offer three weeks paid vacation for new employees, 12 paid holidays, unlimited sick time, and paid parental leave.

Equal Employment Opportunity

We believe in equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, age, national origin, citizenship, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, or gender identity. We value diversity in the workplace, and that starts with our applicants. We encourage you to apply, even if you don't check all the boxes, and we look forward to reviewing your application! In addition, if you need a reasonable accommodation as part of your application for employment or interviews with us, please let us know.

ITAR/EAR Requirements

This position requires access to export controlled information. To conform to U.S. Government export regulations applicable to that information, applicant must either be (A) a U.S. person, defined as a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (green card holder), (iii) refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, (B) eligible to access the export controlled information without a required export authorization, or (C) eligible and reasonably likely to obtain the required export authorization from the applicable U.S. government agency. The Company may, for legitimate business reasons, decline to pursue any export licensing process.