Manager, Software Engineering

About the role

Figma is seeking a leader for the Databases team to oversee the foundational data layer supporting our global platform. You will manage the engineers responsible for our sharded Postgres clusters and the development of next-generation data infrastructure.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Manage and mentor engineers working on sharded Postgres, schema management, migration tools, and provisioning.
• Maintain the reliability and performance of the data tier by leading incident response and fostering a strong postmortem culture.
• Define the technical roadmap while balancing infrastructure stability with the needs of product engineering teams.
• Collaborate with cross-functional leadership to prioritize work across competing demands.
• Recruit and develop infrastructure talent to build a high-performing team.
• Ensure transparent communication regarding project progress, risks, and planning.
• Work with peer managers to establish operational standards across the infrastructure organization.
• Integrate AI-assisted tooling to enhance developer workflows for database operations and safety checks.

Requirements

• 4+ years of experience managing infrastructure, platform, or backend engineering teams.
• Technical expertise in distributed systems, stateful infrastructure, or data-intensive backend environments.
• Ability to quickly learn new technical domains and apply core engineering principles.
• Experience establishing reliability practices, on-call rotations, and incident response procedures.
• Proven track record of career development, including coaching, performance management, and team building.
• Experience leading distributed teams across various time zones.

Nice to have

• Experience managing managers or leading multiple teams across related domains.
• Ability to define organizational-wide technical vision and strategy.
• Hands-on experience with relational databases at scale, specifically Postgres or MySQL, including sharding and replication.
• Familiarity with AI or LLM-assisted tools for infrastructure operations.
• Background in adjacent areas such as caching, streaming, event processing, or observability.
• Experience working at a high-growth product company.

Skills & tools

• Postgres
• MySQL
• Distributed systems
• Database sharding and replication
• AI/LLM-assisted developer tooling
• Observability
• Caching and streaming infrastructure

Practical notes

Annual Base Salary: $258,000 to $376,000 USD.

Benefits include equity, health, dental, and vision coverage, retirement contributions, parental leave, mental health support, and flexible PTO. Candidates must keep cameras on during video interviews. In-person onboarding is required for all new hires. If you require accommodations during the hiring process, please contact accommodations-ext@figma.com.