Senior Engineering Manager

At Prisma, we're redefining how developers work with databases.

If you're fascinated by the cutting-edge data infrastructure powering companies like Twitter, Airbnb, and Facebook—but want the agility, ownership, and impact of a fast-moving startup—Prisma is the place for you.

Backed by top-tier Silicon Valley investors like Amplify Partners, Kleiner Perkins, and IVP, our small, distributed team is making advanced database technology accessible to developers everywhere.

Our open-source tools are trusted by over 100,000 developers each month, with a thriving community on Discord and GitHub, where we've earned over 41,000 GitHub Stars.

At the heart of our commercial offerings is Prisma Postgres, our flagship product designed to supercharge PostgreSQL with modern developer workflows, performance optimizations, and seamless scaling.

Alongside it, Prisma Accelerate, Pulse, Optimise, and Studio provide a world-class toolkit for building with data.

By combining the power of open-source with cutting-edge commercial solutions, we're shaping the future of databases—one developer at a time.

What would you do at Prisma?

As Senior Engineering Manager, you will own the core commercial infrastructure and products, ensuring they scale to millions of users while maintaining performance and reliability.

You will lead a high-impact team responsible for Prisma Postgres, Accelerate, Pulse, and future commercial initiatives, driving innovation through building, designing, planning, and managing risk.

This is a central role where your decisions will shape Prisma's direction, working closely with the Head of Product Development and under direct visibility from the CEO and COO.

You will collaborate with a talented, ambitious team that is eager to push boundaries and deliver cutting-edge database solutions.

Your focus will be on product excellence, operational stability, and empowering your team to achieve their best work.

Your responsibilities will span three key areas:

1. People: Empower your engineering team to achieve technical excellence and meaningful impact by ensuring they have the support and resources to do their best work. This includes providing constructive feedback, creating learning and growth opportunities, and challenging them to improve. Help them understand why their work matters and how it aligns with company-wide KPIs.
2. Process: Optimize and refine development processes and technical practices to drive continuous improvement. We believe in relentless optimization—if something can be done better, we find a way. You will lead engineering team meetings to plan and prioritize work, run retrospectives to identify improvements, and establish policies that enhance communication, collaboration, and code quality.
3. Delivery: Success for your team means consistently delivering high-quality software that provides value while maintaining a sustainable pace. You will collaborate closely with the Product Manager to prioritize product initiatives, define the roadmap, and drive technical improvements.

An Ideal Candidate Profile

We believe the right candidate for this position should meet a majority of the criteria listed below:

1. 8+ years of proven leadership in software engineering teams, with hands-on experience as a software engineer.
2. Experience in database and backend technologies, including TypeScript, PostgreSQL, and familiarity with cloud services (we work with Cloudflare), APIs, and developer tooling is a plus.
3. Experience managing highly available production backends including incident prevention and management, risk management, well-designed systems, balancing tech debt with delivery.
4. High standards for quality, ensuring excellence while balancing pragmatism, purpose, and a strong sense of agency—taking ownership, making thoughtful trade-offs, and driving meaningful impact.
5. Strong communication skills in English, both written and verbal—able to articulate complex ideas clearly, adapt messaging to different audiences, give and receive constructive feedback effectively, and foster collaboration across teams.
6. You have a structured thought process, approaching problems methodically and making well-reasoned decisions.
7. You plan effectively, setting clear goals, anticipating challenges, and ensuring smooth execution while keeping stakeholders aligned.
8. Nice to have: Experience working with executives, directors, and/or founders and managing a wide range of senior stakeholders.

What’s it like to work at Prisma?

You’re likely to be a great fit for the team if you ...

• have an ownership mindset. As an Engineering Manager leading the ORM team, you’ll have an outsized impact on decisions and the way things are executed.
• stay nimble. It’s a startup, things change and you are okay with that. Be ready to re-calibrate often and stay flexible.
• be kind and collaborative. Come in ready to share your ideas and listen to feedback.

What’s in it for you?

We put our people first.

• Strong pay, full flexibility, and benefits that make a difference.

Take the time off that you need, grow your career, and do work that matters.

An opportunity to lead the team shaping Prisma's cutting-edge cloud products, driving innovation in modern database tooling and redefining how developers build and scale applications.

A talented and highly motivated team who are excited about building great products that developers love.

Competitive base salary and stock options, including extended post-termination exercise windows.

Fully remote work with flexibility to work from anywhere within our required time zones.

If you prefer an office environment, we provide access to a local co-working space for up to ten days per month.

Generous time off, including twenty-four days of paid vacation and paid sick leave.

Parental benefits, including twenty weeks of fully paid parental leave and child sick leave.

Sabbatical leave, with six weeks of fully paid time off after three years of continuous employment.

Mental health support, including four fully paid mental health days per year and access to professional resources.

Tech and ergonomic budget to equip you with the tools you need, plus an ergonomic chair subsidy for your comfort and well-being.

Annual offsites, bringing the team together twice a year with all expenses paid retreats at exciting locations.

Relocation support, offering a relocation package for team members moving to Berlin after twelve months, if you choose to relocate.

Health and pension benefits, including comprehensive health, dental, vision, and 401k matching.

Remote work: To ensure effective collaboration, we can currently only accept candidates within the timezone GMT -2 to GMT +2 for this position.

What is our hiring process like?

1. Introductory call with our Head of Product Development.
2. Written assignment where you will outline your experience with People, Processes & Delivery.
3. System design interview with an Engineering Manager and a Senior Engineer.
4. Final interview with our CEO.

Offer: The above serves as a basic outline; we might choose to add or remove steps based on the information that we gather during the process.

If you believe that this is the right position for you, then please send your resume along with any supporting documentation or information to us via the link provided on this page.

We typically respond within 7 business days.

Prisma follows fair and merit-based hiring practices, ensuring all candidates are evaluated based on their skills, experience, and qualifications.

We do not make hiring decisions based on age, race, ethnicity, sex, gender identity, parental or caregiver status, trade union membership, disability, religious belief or lack of belief, life expectancy, sexual orientation, genetic information, or veteran or military status.