Engineer Manager - Platform

About the role

You will lead the EU/US Platform engineering team that owns the core infrastructure powering Vonage Communications APIs globally. The role involves managing a geographically distributed group of platform engineers responsible for the platforms, workflows, and automation that the wider engineering organization depends on daily. You will drive the platform roadmap under the direction of the Director of Engineering and Product Owner, ensuring deliverables are not blocked by external dependencies. This position requires coaching a team transitioning from SRE and infrastructure backgrounds into platform product engineering while maintaining a customer-first mindset. You will coordinate large-scale, cross-team changes such as Kubernetes upgrades, tooling migrations, and security hardening that span multiple stakeholders and time zones. Success in this role means operating within strict compliance and security constraints to meet regulatory requirements and maintain appropriate guardrails and policies. You will be data-driven by establishing and tracking SLAs, error budgets, KPIs, and change failure rates to prioritize work and demonstrate impact.

Key facts

What you'll do

Lead the EU/US Platform engineering team and manage the day-to-day operations of a geographically distributed group of platform engineers.

Drive the platform roadmap forward under the direction of the Director of Engineering and Product Owner, ensuring deliverables are not blocked by external dependencies.

Develop your people by coaching team members who are transitioning from SRE and infrastructure backgrounds into platform product ownership and modern platform development practices.

Coordinate large-scale cross-team changes including Kubernetes upgrades, tooling migrations, and security hardening that require alignment across multiple stakeholders and time zones.

Operate within compliance and security constraints to ensure all platform work meets regulatory requirements and maintain appropriate guardrails and policies.

Be data-driven by establishing and tracking SLAs, error budgets, KPIs, and change failure rates to prioritize work and measure outcomes.

Partner with product and engineering stakeholders to translate business needs into platform capabilities that support omnichannel communications use cases.

Champion automation and platform self-service to reduce friction and increase velocity for engineering teams across the organization.

Influence engineering standards and best practices to create a consistent and reliable platform experience for developers.

Act as a leader of change during a platform evolution that includes modernizing tooling, raising the automation ceiling, and standardizing how software is shipped at scale.

Take ownership of complex, high-stakes work where decisions have direct impact on customer experiences and business outcomes on a global scale.

Provide clear communication and transparency into platform status, risks, and performance to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Support incident response and reliability efforts by defining runbooks, improving observability, and driving continuous improvement initiatives.

Collaborate with security, compliance, and operations teams to ensure platform changes adhere to organizational policies and industry standards.

Enable scalability and resilience of the communications APIs by contributing to architectural decisions and long-term platform strategy.

Requirements

Must have experience leading a platform or infrastructure engineering team in a cloud-native, API-driven environment.

Must have strong people management skills to coach, grow, and develop engineers transitioning from SRE and infrastructure roles into product engineering.

Must be comfortable operating in a fast-paced, high-growth environment where priorities can shift quickly and ambiguity is common.

Must have hands-on experience with Kubernetes, container orchestration, and infrastructure automation tools.

Must have a deep understanding of security and compliance principles and the ability to implement guardrails that protect the organization and its customers.

Must be proficient in at least one modern programming language and capable of writing production-grade code to support platform initiatives.

Must have experience using data and metrics to drive decision-making, including SLAs, error budgets, and change failure rates.

Must be able to coordinate across multiple time zones and work effectively with globally distributed teams and stakeholders.

Nice to have

Experience with modern messaging and communications APIs and the challenges of real-time, customer-centric architectures.

Background in regulated industries where compliance and security constraints heavily influence engineering decisions.

Experience with DevOps practices, CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure as code.

Practical notes

This is a full-time position based in Wroclaw, Poland, with hybrid work expectations.

Travel is not required as part of this role.

No visa sponsorship is mentioned in the source information.

No application deadline is specified in the source material.