Senior Engineering Manager

About us Alpha is a product studio focused on the intersection of AI and consumer social – backed by a16z and many of the top investors in the world. Our goal is to create social products that we use, that our friends use, and that have the potential to reach billions of people. Cobalt Streamworks was our first app, and we’ve been quietly growing that while building our next set of products. We have years of runway, millions of users, and find ourselves at a very interesting time, where AI is making entirely new things possible with voice. We are a remote-friendly company – with a strong commitment to ensuring people can do great work here and thrive without having to live near an office. This role is open to candidates across the U.S. If you are a talented builder who’s interested in joining us, we’d love to talk. The role As a leader on the engineering team, you'll work closely with our founders, product, data, and data licensing teams to turn a complex technical surface into robust systems and a clear, sequenced roadmap. You'll own the people, delivery, and direction for the teams that build the backend, infrastructure, and intelligence layer the rest of the product depends on, and you'll partner with a platform lead on the technical direction. This is a player-coach role: you will not be expected to code daily, but you will be in the design conversations and sequencing the work by complexity and impact. Who you are You are experienced. You have 7+ years of experience in software engineering (ideally backend, platform, or infrastructure) and 2+ years of engineering management experience. You've sourced and hired amazing engineers, and you've supported a team of 6+ engineers through coaching and charting fulfilling career paths. You care about good engineering. You know what high quality code and useful engineering processes look like. You can be a thoughtful technical voice and can support your team in making diligent architecture decisions, with an eye towards simple systems that scale from a few thousand users to millions. You partner with a platform lead who owns deep technical direction, and you know when to dive in and when to escalate. You are AI-fluent. You are proficient with modern AI tooling and can reason about the changes a codebase and a process need in order to enable AI-assisted development. You're a strong communicator. You're a strong written and verbal communicator; you can capture the essence of complex situations quickly and communicate them to technical and non-technical partners. You're scrappy and entrepreneurial. You like to ship and have a bias towards getting things done. You prioritize by complexity and ROI, thrive in fast paced environments, and view ambiguity as an opportunity to lead Cobalt Streamworks closer to its mission. You invest in your team. You are committed to your craft as a people manager and prioritize coaching, developing, and supporting individuals on your team. You care about your team's engagement, happiness, and health, and set clear expectations for your reports based on their level and role while providing feedback on performance early and often. You are a team player. You have a low-ego, put the team's success first, and believe that fostering a collaborative and diverse environment is not only integral to the team's well-being but also crucial for driving innovation and achieving long-term success. What you will do You'll build and support the team. You'll work with our recruiting team to build an incredible engineering team. You'll guide the development of our backend and infrastructure, and help the team turn product and technical vision into a tangible roadmap each month. You'll collaborate closely with EPD leadership and contribute to processes that drive shipping velocity. You'll partner on technical excellence and raise leverage. You'll work hand in hand with a platform lead who owns backend technical standards, own incident process and developer-experience improvements, and lead the changes needed to enable AI-assisted development across the platform. You'll work collaboratively and help shape strategy. You'll work closely with a talented group of engineers, product managers, and data scientists to understand problems and co-create solutions. You'll also work closely with leadership to convert technical and product visions into tangible roadmaps. You'll lead and define technical strategy and roadmaps. You'll work closely with your team and cross-functional stakeholders such as product, finance, and trust & safety to identify, drive, and execute against high impact opportunities such as cost efficiency, performance, and user safety. You'll grow, teach, and improve rapidly. At Cobalt Streamworks you'll be working with an incredible team, who love to learn from and teach each other. You'll find yourself stretching to new areas, immersed in feedback, and growing your skills on a daily basis. You'll create something meaningful. Social products allow people to connect in ways th