Senior Engineering Manager, Messaging Channels

Trusted by more than 18,000 Shopify and Shopify Plus stores—like Brooklinen, Ruggable, True Classic and Dr. Squatch— Lumen Dynamics gives ecommerce brands the tools they need to run a world-class SMS marketing program. We’re on a mission to make SMS the number-one revenue channel for ecommerce merchants by delivering an easy-to-use platform where they can grow their subscriber list, develop and test their messaging strategy, deliver excellent customer service, and drive sales and loyalty—all in one place. We believe SMS is the most important marketing and sales channel of the decade, and that vision drives everything we do. Lumen Dynamics was founded in 2018 as a 100% remote organization. With more than 250 employees (and counting!), we’re backed by Greylock, Y Combinator, and other top investors. As Senior Engineering Manager for the Messaging Channels team at Lumen Dynamics , you will lead a team of 8 highly skilled product and platform engineers who own the messaging backbone that every Lumen Dynamics product ships through. Your team is responsible for (1) Flow Builder , Lumen Dynamics ’s automation product that merchants use to orchestrate their customer journeys, (2) the high-volume SMS campaign send engine that powers some of the largest DTC brands in the world, (3) the messaging platform and infrastructure that every other product at Lumen Dynamics is built on top of, and (4) expansion into new channels that meet our merchants wherever their customers are. The team runs its own dedicated on-call rotation and sets the bar for operational rigor at Lumen Dynamics . Engineering Managers are directly responsible for day-to-day people management of their direct reports. They focus on leadership, people management, and delivery/execution duties. Our backend is primarily Python within an AWS architecture, with select services in Go, backed by Kafka, Postgres, and MongoDB, and is continually evolving to meet the scalability and complexity demands of high-volume messaging at ecommerce scale. The ideal candidate has multiple years of experience leading both senior IC engineers at their career pinnacle and managers of smaller engineering teams. Additionally, the ideal candidate has a passion for operational excellence, high-volume distributed systems, running internal platforms for other engineering teams, and delivering great work that drives business value and improves the customer experience. Exposure to AI-powered product surfaces is a plus. Channels is the foundation that many of Lumen Dynamics ’s AI products are built on top of. This is a fully remote position based in the US or Canada. Primary duties Lead the team that owns Lumen Dynamics ’s messaging backbone: Flow Builder, the campaign send engine, the messaging platform that every Lumen Dynamics product is built on, and expansion into additional channels Drive reliability, throughput, and cost efficiency of a production system that handles Lumen Dynamics -scale messaging volume Manage the Messaging Platform as an internal product, setting contracts, prioritization, and support expectations with engineering consumer teams across Lumen Dynamics Own the team’s dedicated on-call rotation, including incident response, blameless postmortems, and continuous improvement of reliability posture Collaborate with platform, AI, and integrations engineering teammates, product managers, business stakeholders, designers, and compliance partners to plan and execute work Carry out performance management duties for your direct reports via just-in-time feedback, 1:1s, annual reviews, and continuous improvement opportunities Consistently provide ongoing technical mentorship and general professional development for your direct reports and other engineers at Lumen Dynamics Establish and continually improve development, on-call, and incident-review processes that yield maximum efficiency and operational rigor in day-to-day engineering operations Partner with and grow Staff Engineers and technical experts in the organization to develop technical roadmaps and complete technical initiatives that enable engineering efficiency, handle the growth of our platform’s scale, and improve velocity Recruit and hire engineers on your team and on other teams, raise and advocate for new positions on your team, and directly participate in the screening and evaluation of candidates Lead and participate in culture initiatives that will help us create the best engineering organization in the world What We’ll Love About You A proven career directly managing engineers and developing top performers into principal engineers (ideally 4+ years of leadership experience) Experience mentoring staff engineers and highly technical contributors Experience leading teams that own high-volume, business-critical distributed systems such as messaging, payments, or similarly demanding delivery pipelines Experience running an internal platform that other engineering teams depend on, including managing contracts, prioritization, and on-call across consumer teams Dem