Backend Infrastructure Engineering Manager

At ActiveFence, our Applicative Infrastructure Team ensures the reliability, scalability, and security of the core backend systems that power our products. We provide the infrastructure and tools development teams need to efficiently deliver features. As the Backend Engineering Manager, you will lead a highly technical team in building shared backend services, supporting deployment pipelines, and ensuring the smooth operation of our infrastructure.

Objective: Lead the Applicative Infrastructure Team to develop scalable backend solutions, shared services, and libraries that support efficient, high-quality feature development across the organization.

Responsibilities:

• Team Leadership: Build, mentor, and manage a team of backend & automations engineers responsible for shared infrastructure components.
• Technical Leadership: Provide hands-on technical guidance and ensure the team follows best practices, including code reviews, testing, and documentation.
• Shared Services Development: Lead the design, development, and maintenance of core backend services and shared infrastructure libraries, driving innovation and ensuring they empower scalable, high-performance solutions across the organization.
• Cross-Team Collaboration: Work with other R&D teams to ensure infrastructure solutions are efficiently integrated and provide the necessary support for feature development.
• System Reliability & Uptime: Architect resilient systems that ensure high availability and uptime of critical core services, focusing on proactive improvements and incident prevention through robust design and automation.
• Security & Compliance: Implement security best practices across infrastructure components, ensuring compliance with organizational policies and regulations.
• CI/CD Pipeline Management: Partner with DevOps and engineering teams to enhance and support CI/CD pipelines, ensuring efficient, secure, and reliable deployments across the organization.
• Automation & Testing: Ensure our infrastructure supports comprehensive automated testing and integrates seamlessly into CI/CD pipelines.

Skills and Qualifications:

Technical Experience:

• Minimum of 5 years of backend development experience with large-scale systems, preferably using Python, Node.js, or TypeScript.
• Proven experience in building and maintaining large-scale SaaS systems, ensuring scalability, performance, and reliability.
• Expertise with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and distributed systems.
• Strong knowledge of microservices architecture and containerization tools (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Experience with databases (e.g., MongoDB, Redis, Elasticsearch) and messaging systems (Kafka, SQS, RabbitMQ).
• Experience in CI/CD pipelines and tools (e.g., ArgoCD, Jenkins).
• Deep understanding of observability tools (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry) to ensure system performance and reliability.
• Strong knowledge of HTTP-based systems and core networking concepts.

Educational Background: Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or equivalent proven experience in backend software engineering.

Leadership Experience: Experience leading backend or infrastructure teams in developing and maintaining scalable systems is a strong advantage.

Experience in Production: Proven experience managing systems in production, including on-call rotations, incident resolution, and performance monitoring.

Soft Skills:

• Strong communication skills, with the ability to collaborate effectively across departments, both in-office and remotely, using asynchronous methods when needed.
• Excellent problem-solving and analytical abilities, capable of addressing challenges independently and in a distributed work environment.
• A proactive, production-focused mindset, ensuring reliability and stability while thriving in a hybrid work model.

Nice to Have:

• Familiarity with Agile methodologies and DevOps practices.
• Understanding of security and compliance in cloud environments.
• Understanding of cloud cost optimization and financial operations (FinOps) practices to help manage cloud resources efficiently.
• Proficiency in infrastructure as code (e.g., Terraform).
• Experience with frontend infrastructure development or full-stack environments.