Senior Manager, Engineering

About the role

Fastly is seeking a technical leader to manage engineering teams focused on building and maintaining our global edge cloud platform. You will guide high-performing developers in creating secure, performant, and scalable distributed systems that power the modern internet. This role centers on fostering a culture of engineering excellence and operational rigor within your team. You will be responsible for translating strategic product goals into technical execution plans that are both realistic and ambitious. The position requires a deep commitment to mentorship and the professional growth of every engineer on your staff. You will act as a primary point of collaboration for product and business stakeholders to ensure technical feasibility is considered early. Success in this role will be measured by the stability, performance, and innovation velocity of the systems your team delivers.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Lead, mentor, and grow a team of software engineers, providing regular feedback and career development guidance.
• Oversee the design and implementation of distributed systems within our edge computing and network services infrastructure.
• Collaborate with cross-functional partners to align engineering output with product roadmaps and business objectives.
• Drive engineering excellence through rigorous code reviews, architectural planning, and adherence to operational best practices.
• Manage project delivery, resource allocation, and team performance metrics to ensure predictable execution.
• Define and maintain technical standards that ensure system reliability, security, and scalability across the codebase.
• Partner with product managers to shape feature proposals and assess the technical implications of new requirements.
• Serve as a technical advisor to senior leadership, translating complex engineering concepts into clear business language.
• Identify and resolve bottlenecks in the development lifecycle to improve team productivity and system quality.
• Champion the adoption of automation and infrastructure improvements to reduce manual toil and increase efficiency.
• Monitor system performance and reliability metrics, guiding your team in the implementation of proactive improvements.
• Facilitate technical design discussions and ensure that architectural decisions are documented and communicated effectively.
• Build and maintain strong working relationships with other engineering teams to ensure alignment on shared goals.
• Promote a culture of continuous learning and experimentation within your team to foster innovation.

Requirements

• Proven experience in an engineering management role within a technical organization, with a track record of leading successful project delivery.
• Background in building and scaling distributed systems or cloud infrastructure, with a deep understanding of how these systems operate in production.
• Ability to manage remote or distributed teams across multiple time zones while maintaining high levels of engagement and productivity.
• Strong communication skills to translate complex technical concepts for non-technical stakeholders and to articulate clear expectations to engineers.
• Experience with modern software development lifecycles and agile methodologies, including sprint planning, retrospectives, and backlog refinement.
• Demonstrated ability to make data-driven decisions regarding engineering priorities and trade-offs.
• Experience with incident management and on-call processes, including leading post-mortems and driving remediation efforts.
• A commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion in building and maintaining high-performing, collaborative teams.

Skills & tools

• Proficiency in cloud-native architectures and edge computing technologies, including container orchestration and service meshes.
• Familiarity with high-scale networking, security, or observability platforms and the challenges of operating them at global scale.
• Experience with languages and frameworks relevant to high-performance systems, such as Go, Rust, or C++.
• Knowledge of infrastructure-as-code tools and version control workflows to manage environment and deployment pipelines.
• Understanding of monitoring, logging, and tracing systems to ensure platform reliability and performance.

Practical notes

Fastly operates as a global organization with a focus on developer-centric products. Candidates must be authorized to work in their respective office locations. Benefits include comprehensive health coverage, equity participation, and professional development support. This is a full-time position based in one of our primary office locations, with expectations for collaboration during standard business hours. Travel may be required for team meetings or company events as determined by business needs. Employment is contingent upon the completion of standard background checks and authorization to work in the selected location.