Sr. Engineering Manager, Sensor - Core Services (Hybrid)

CrowdStrike; Redmond (WA); Hybrid; USD 190,000 - 270,000; Full time

Job summary

CrowdStrike, a global cybersecurity leader, seeks a Senior Engineering Manager for the Core Services team that powers the sensor infrastructure across Windows, Linux, and macOS. Lead technical direction, roadmap, and architecture while ensuring high-quality releases.

You will collaborate with product and program management, hire and mentor engineers, and maintain reliability under delivery pressure in a hybrid on-site role in Redmond, WA.

Qualifications

• Experience managing software engineering teams with a strong developer background.
• Hands-on systems software experience; deep knowledge of C/C++.
• Experience owning production infrastructure at scale.
• Cross-platform experience across Windows, Linux, and macOS.
• Strong understanding of network protocols and cryptographic integration.
• Ability to mentor and develop engineers.
• Ability to translate technical tradeoffs for leadership.

Responsibilities

• Set architectural direction and participate in reviews; understand team architecture and failure modes.
• Drive the technical roadmap balancing near-term delivery and long-term health.
• Make high-stakes technical decisions and advise senior leadership.

Skills

Team leadership

C/C++ proficiency

Systems software

Network protocol knowledge

Production infrastructure

Cross-platform experience

Code reviews

Mentoring

Job description

As a global leader in cybersecurity, CrowdStrike protects the people, processes and technologies that drive modern organizations. Since 2011, our mission hasn't changed - we're here to stop breaches, and we've redefined modern security with the world's most advanced AI-native platform. We work on large scale distributed systems, processing almost 3 trillion events per day and this traffic is growing daily. Our customers span all industries, and they count on CrowdStrike to keep their businesses running, their communities safe and their lives moving forward. We're proud to work for a mission-driven company leveraging AI to transform the way we work. CrowdStrikers drive their careers through flexibility and autonomy while also being expected to contribute to a culture of responsible AI adoption, experimentation, and innovation. We use an AI-first mindset as a force multiplier to proactively and continuously accelerate execution, build expertise, uncover insights, and solve complex problems. We’re always looking to add talented CrowdStrikers to the team who have limitless passion, a relentless focus on innovation and a fanatical commitment to our customers, our community and each other. Ready to join a mission that matters? The future of cybersecurity starts with you.

About The Role

The Core Services team owns the sensor infrastructure that every CrowdStrike endpoint depends on: secure network communications, cryptographic operations, content delivery, and secure local data storage. These are foundational runtime components that execute on every protected endpoint across Windows, Linux, and macOS.

We're looking for a Senior Engineering Manager who brings the technical depth this domain demands and the organizational instincts to lead a team at the center of the sensor's dependency graph. You'll set technical direction, drive the roadmap, make high-stakes architectural decisions, and advise senior leadership, while staying close enough to the work to ensure every feature meets a high quality bar before it ships.

This is a cross-functional role. Mac, Linux, Windows, and many other teams inside and outside your core organization depend on what your team builds. You'll need to build trust with those teams, navigate competing priorities, and hold the reliability bar under delivery pressure. You will work cross-functionally with peers across engineering management, product management, and program management in our varied environment.

Engineering Managers at CrowdStrike are hands-on technical leaders. We don't expect you to write code on the critical path, but you'll need to deeply understand the architecture, data flows, and systems your team owns - well enough to troubleshoot, review PRs with substance, and push back when a design is heading somewhere it shouldn't. Your technical depth is also what makes you an effective advisor to leadership: you'll be expected to represent your team's position with confidence in cross-org discussions and to translate complex technical tradeoffs into clear guidance for leadership.

This role inherits a team with clear technical ownership and an expanded charter. The work is foundational - the services this team owns must be correct, fast, and reliable on every endpoint, every release. Operational risk is real and well-understood here; the right hire will bring the engineering rigor and management discipline to hold that bar while continuing to evolve the team's architecture.

Location:

• This role is hybrid, requiring 2x days per week on-site at one of the posted locations.

What You'll Do:

Technical leadership

• Set architectural direction for the team and participate actively in code and design reviews; develop deep familiarity with the team's architecture, data flows, and failure modes
• Drive the technical roadmap, balancing near-term delivery commitments against longer-term architectural health
• Make high-stakes technical decisions and serve as a technical advisor to senior leadership in cross-org planning and escalations by translating complex tradeoffs into clear guidance

Team leadership

• Hire, coach, and grow engineers through honest, frequent feedback and genuine investment in their careers; lead the full recruitment process from initial contact through successful onboarding
• Build team cohesion, resolve interpersonal friction, and create an environment where engineers can do their best work
• Support your team through resourcing conversations, career development, and the harder conversations when they're needed

Delivery and operations

• Own project resourcing and workload which includes knowing when to say "no" and "not yet"; keep the team on track and adjust when surprises happen
• Own the quality bar for what the team ships; triage support escalations and build strong working relationships with partner teams
• Drive continuous improvement in the team's end-to-end testing and validation practices
• Gather and communicate status clearly working in tight collaboration with cloud communication, policy teams and other partner teams, from individual contributors to executives

What You'll Need:

• Prior experience managing software engineering teams, with a strong foundation as a software developer
• Hands-on background in systems software; deep familiarity with C and/or C++ - this is a low-level systems role, not application-layer development
• Strong technical grounding in network protocols, connection management, traffic and protocol management, cryptographic integration, and storage systems
• A "learn it all" mindset with curiosity to dive deep into unfamiliar domains and adapt quickly as technology and requirements evolve
• Experience owning production infrastructure at scale - you understand the real cost of reliability regressions and breaking changes at endpoint scale
• Cross-platform exposure across Windows, Linux, and macOS - you can reason about portability and behavioral consistency
• Solid design and problem-solving instincts with a genuine passion for engineering excellence, quality, security, performance and the ability to raise that standard across a team
• Demonstrated experience mentoring