Sr. Manager, Software Engineering

avalara; United States; On-site; USD 130,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation package with bonuses

Paid time off and parental leave

Health and wellness benefits

Diversity initiatives and resource groups

Job summary

Avalara is seeking a Software Engineering Manager to lead distributed engineering teams focused on creating scalable, cloud-native SaaS solutions. You will drive execution, enhance engineering quality, and ensure the delivery of secure systems that ease tax compliance for clients.

The role requires experience in engineering management, strong technical leadership, and a commitment to nurturing talent within the organization. Avalara emphasizes an inclusive culture, offering competitive compensation, health benefits, and opportunities for professional growth.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of software development experience delivering large-scale production systems.
• 2+ years of engineering management experience leading distributed teams.
• Hands-on experience with AWS or another major cloud provider.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop distributed engineering teams delivering scalable SaaS solutions.
• Define and execute the technology roadmap for a best-in-class web platform.
• Drive predictable, high-quality execution across multiple Scrum teams.
• Support architectural decisions that improve scalability, performance, security, and cost efficiency.

Skills

Software development

Engineering management

Distributed teams

Front-end development

Full-stack development

Cloud-native architecture

CI/CD

AI-enabled development

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or Engineering

Tools

AWS

GitLab

Terraform

Docker

Job description

What You'll Do

Avalara is looking for a Software Engineering Manager to lead distributed engineering teams building scalable, cloud‑native SaaS solutions. You will help drive execution, improve engineering quality and reliability, and help deliver secure, high‑performance systems that simplify tax compliance for customers. You will report to the Director of engineering.

What the Team Does

Our engineering teams build and evolve cloud‑native platforms that support tax compliance across large‑scale transaction environments. The team focuses on building a platform for our customer experiences and user interfaces with scalable architecture, strong engineering fundamentals, operational excellence, and modern development tools and practices that improve speed, quality, and customer experience.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop distributed engineering teams delivering scalable SaaS solutions
• Define and execute the technology roadmap for a best‑in‑class web platform
• Drive predictable, high‑quality execution across multiple Scrum teams
• Support architectural decisions that improve scalability, performance, security, and cost efficiency
• Strengthen CI/CD, automation, and DevOps practices to improve deployment speed and quality
• Serve as an escalation point for production and customer‑impacting issues
• Partner with Product, UX, Architecture, and other stakeholders to align technical work with priorities
• Hire, coach, and develop engineers
• Use metrics to guide decisions and continuous improvement
• Strengthen engineering fundamentals across object‑oriented design, microservices, APIs, and secure development
• Lead adoption of AI‑enabled development practices that improve team effectiveness
• Raise and continuously advance Avalara's AI engineering capability, demonstrating deep, hands‑on experience applying AI across coding, testing, operations, and engineering workflows to drive measurable improvements in productivity, quality, and delivery speed. Introduce new AI tools, establish best practices, and operationalize AI‑driven development.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field
• 10+ years of software development experience delivering large‑scale production systems
• 2+ years of engineering management or equivalent leadership experience leading distributed teams
• Experience with front‑end and full‑stack development using technologies such as React, Angular, TypeScript, Node.js, C#, .NET, and REST APIs
• Experience designing and building scalable microservices architectures
• Hands‑on experience with AWS or another major cloud provider and cloud‑native architecture
• Experience implementing CI/CD pipelines and DevOps practices using tools such as GitLab, Terraform, and Docker
• Experience with scalability, performance optimization, and secure development practices
• Experience hiring, coaching, and developing engineers
• Demonstrated use of data and metrics to drive measurable improvements
• Applied experience using AI to improve engineering outcomes such as speed, quality, scale, or cost efficiency
• Experience with a relational database such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, or Oracle

Benefits

• Competitive compensation package with potential bonuses
• Paid time off and paid parental leave
• Health and wellness benefits including private medical, life, and disability insurance (varies by location)
• Inclusive culture and diversity initiatives with employee‑run resource groups

Equal Opportunity Employer

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. Supporting diversity and inclusion is a cornerstone of our company — we don’t want people to fit into our culture, but to enrich it. All qualified candidates will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, age, gender, national orientation, disability, sexual orientation, U.S. Veteran status, or any other factor protected by law. If you require any reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know.