Engineering Manager of Managers, Data Platform
at Stripe
San Francisco, Seattle, United States
Who we are
About Stripe
Stripe is a financial infrastructure platform for businesses. Millions of companies - from the world’s largest enterprises to the most ambitious startups - use Stripe to accept payments, grow their revenue, and accelerate new business opportunities. Our mission is to increase the GDP of the internet, and we have a staggering amount of work ahead. That means you have an unprecedented opportunity to put the global economy within everyone’s reach while doing the most important work of your career.
About the team
About the team
The Big Data Infrastructure organization is a globally distributed team of approximately 40 engineers spread across Dublin, Bangalore, Seattle, and San Francisco. This team is the backbone of the company’s data ecosystem, responsible for building, scaling, and maintaining the highly reliable platforms that power data storage, orchestration, and processing at scale.
As the Head of Big Data Infra, you will lead a global, ~40-person engineering organization responsible for the foundational data platforms that drive the business. Reporting directly to the Head of Compute, you will define the strategic vision and roadmap for the company's data lake, orchestration pipelines, and batch computing environments.
The team's technical portfolio spans four core domains:
As the Head of Big Data Infra, you will lead a global, ~40-person engineering organization responsible for the foundational data platforms that drive the business. Reporting directly to the Head of Compute, you will define the strategic vision and roadmap for the company's data lake, orchestration pipelines, and batch computing environments.
The team's technical portfolio spans four core domains:
- Datalake (Storage): Managing scalable cloud storage and metadata layers, leveraging Amazon S3, Apache Iceberg (metastore and integrations), SAL, and Hive Metastore (HMS).
- Data Orchestration: Ensuring robust pipeline execution and scheduling using Apache Airflow.
- Batch Compute Infra (Data Store): Maintaining foundational data infrastructure and legacy systems, including Hadoop.
- Batch Compute Experience (Data Processing): Optimizing and delivering powerful data processing environments utilizing Apache Spark and Apache Celeborn.
What you’ll do
You will move beyond day-to-day management to act as an industry leader, effectively advocating for your organization's mission and impact. You will be expected to see problems others don't and rally people to independently create solutions.
Responsibilities
- Set Strategic Vision: Define the scope, vision, and goals for your organization with little or no guidance. You will anticipate industry trends to influence Stripe's long-range plans and set direction on a multi-year timeframe.
- Lead at Scale: Manage the achievement of and accountability for broad swaths of programs. You will establish wide-ranging and scaled processes, anticipating and removing roadblocks across multiple teams.
- Drive Operational Excellence: Instill a culture of rigorous thinking and meticulous craftsmanship. You will ensure your organization drives constant improvement in team processes and maintains high standards of operational rigor.
- Indirect Influence: Use indirect influence to steer other teams toward making the right decisions for Stripe. You will effectively communicate your team's plan and how it links to Stripe's company vision to cross-functional stakeholders.
- Obsess Over Talent: Proactively invest in the development of the organization and its people at all levels. You will recruit world-class talent and coach your direct reports—who are themselves managers - to elevate the skills of the leadership team.
- Stewardship & Culture: Act as an ambassador and advocate for Stripe, modeling ownership for all other Stripes. You will actively work to increase Stripe's inclusivity and diversity and use our operating principles to guide decision-making.
Who you are
We’re looking for someone who meets the minimum requirements to be considered for the role. If you meet these requirements, you are encouraged to apply. The preferred qualifications are a bonus, not a requirement.
Minimum requirements
- Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience with minimum 5 years of experience with software development.
- Minimum 5 years of experience in a technical leadership role; overseeing strategic projects.
- Minimum 3 years of Manager of Managers experience (managing other engineering managers).
- Experience building diverse teams to tackle challenging technical problems.
- Ability to thrive in a collaborative environment involving different stakeholders and subject matter experts.
Preferred qualifications
- Strategic Ambiguity: Proven ability to translate chaos into clarity and navigate complex, high-impact work where you must define your own scope.
- Infrastructure at Scale: Successfully shipped and operated critical infrastructure with significant responsibility over funds or critical data.
- Cross-Functional Influence: A track record of getting other teams on board with your vision to support execution in a way that benefits the broader company.
- Curiosity: You enjoy learning and diving into the nuts-and-bolts of how things work (e.g., global money movement rails, currency conversion, or inter-company flows).
- Humility and Adaptability: You are humble and self-aware, with a history of adapting your management approach across different environments and seeking feedback to grow as a leader.