Engineering Manager, Observability

We’re a global team of over 400 people, working together to push the boundaries of open-source technology and multi-cloud solutions. Our vision is to help developers, builders, and creators bring their ideas to life with speed and simplicity, by providing a cloud data platform that makes open-source databases, search, streaming, and application infrastructure easily accessible to everyone. 

The Role:

We are looking for a skilled Engineering Manager to lead our Observability team. This is a critical role focused on providing observability solutions for all customers.

You will report to the Head of Platform, working closely with your engineering team and product manager to drive revenue through three core responsibilities:

• Operational Excellence: Ensure our existing observability offering is up and running all the time.
• Customer Satisfaction: Support our existing external customer base by resolving escalated support issues and collaborating with them to understand and solve their needs.
• Product Differentiation: Ideate and develop innovative new features that attract our target customer segment, drive product engagement, and ultimately fuel growth.

What You’ll Do:

• Strategic Planning: Partner with the Product Manager and Domain Head to create the team’s roadmap, balancing business growth with essential engineering initiatives. Ability to identify technical debt, and balance innovation with stability is vital.
• Project Management: Oversee the team’s backlog and projects, providing clear, timely, and actionable updates to stakeholders on progress and potential blockers.
• Leadership & Delivery: Champion a culture of urgency and ownership to deliver impactful results. You’ll be accountable for the team’s delivery in all aspects, including quality, security, and reliability.
• Team Enablement: Empower your team to act as “product custodians” by consistently addressing foundational and production issues.
• Performance & Development: Provide clear goals and feedback to manage expectations and drive both individual and team performance.
• Team Facilitation: Lead team meetings, such as planning sessions and retrospectives, to continuously improve workflows and delivery.
• Culture Building: Foster a psychologically safe, high-trust environment where curiosity and healthy debate are encouraged.
• Collaboration: Ensure effective communication and collaboration both within the team and across the wider organization.

What We’re Looking For: 

Our engineering managers have a hands-on programming background, and we expect them to have a meaningful say in technical conversations. While we typically look for at least five years of hands-on experience and two years in a people leadership role, your accomplishments matter more than years on a resume. Whether you’re a manager with a strong technical core, or a staff engineer looking to dive deeper into people leadership, we want to hear about the products you’ve shipped, the impact they had, and what you learned along the way. 

Leadership skills:

• People Leadership: A proven track record of leading diverse teams, from junior to senior engineers, to successfully deliver software products.
• Product Thinking: A strong product sense that enables your team to design innovative, cloud-native products that stay ahead of the curve.
• Communication: Excellent communication skills in English, with the ability to effectively engage directly with customers.
• Adaptability: The ability to bring order and clarity to a dynamic, ambiguous environment, a trait essential in a fast-growing tech company.
• Team Building: Experience in recruiting engineering talent and a deep understanding of what it takes to build and retain high-performing teams.
• Agile Expertise: Experience with agile software development methodologies.

Technical skills:

• Observability: Extensive experience with observability concepts on a big scale. You have an understanding of SLAs, SLOs, and SLIs.
• Database Concepts:Strong knowledge of database fundamentals, including OLAP vs. OLTP, persistence, replication, and clustering.  Experience with ClickHouse specifically regarding logs, metrics, and OpenTelemetry is highly desirable.
• Distributed Systems: Experience in building and designing distributed systems in a cloud environment.
• Observability: A good grasp of monitoring and observability tools like Prometheus, Grafana, and OpenTelemetry.
• SQL Proficiency: The ability to work with SQL to interact with our platform’s master database.
• Release & Quality: Deep understanding of release management and testing best practices to own the delivery pipeline.
• Problem-Solving: A genuine interest in solving complex technical challenges with customer-focused solutions.

Amazing! What’s next:

If you think Aiven is the place for you and that our Values align with yours, send us your resume and we’ll get in touch!

Global Benefits:

Our global benefits are designed to help you thrive and grow, personally and professionally:

• Participate in Aiven’s equity plan.
• Balance work and life with our hybrid work policy.
• Choose the equipment you need to set yourself up for success.
• Use your Professional Development Plan budget for learning opportunities.
• Receive holistic wellbeing support through our global Employee Assistance Program.
• Inquire about our Global Time Off Commitment (Parental and Sick Leave, as well as Personal Time)
• Enjoy country-specific benefits for our global cast.

How to Recognize and Avoid Employment Scams:

There has been a rise in fake job postings used by scammers to get personal information. At Aiven, all of our emails relating to recruitment come from an @aiven.io, @greenhouse.io or @eu.greenhouse.io domain and all of our interviews are conducted by video call or in person.  Our interviews will never occur via text or chat. If you’re unsure of the legitimacy of a job opportunity/offer pertaining to Aiven, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at recruitment@aiven.io.

Equal Opportunities:

Aiven provides equal employment opportunities to all qualified employees and applicants for employment without regard to age, gender identity, national or ethnic origin, religion, sexual orientation, physical and mental ability, marital and family status or without regard to any other similar personal attributes. Aiven complies with applicable local laws governing non-discrimination in employment in every location in which the company operates. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation, training and any other terms and conditions related to employment.

At Aiven we are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities or special needs in our working environment and job application procedures. We make all reasonable accommodations for persons with disabilities or who otherwise need support to thrive in the workplace. We are committed to continuously improving workplace accessibility. There is an option to request a discussion in the application process but if you have any questions before applying please write to us at recruitment@aiven.io.

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