Engineering Manager, Subscriber Experiences

Location: DC-Washington-TWP Headquarters

Time Type: Full time

Job Description

Join the future of news

We’re on a mission to deliver riveting storytelling for all of America. At The Washington Post, you’ll help reinvent news. Our work is driven by a deep investigative spirit and enhanced by innovation to bring audiences closer to the stories that matter most.

About Our Team

The Washington Post is powered by the passion and talent of our people. It takes all of us to reinvent news. Beyond our award-winning Newsroom and Opinions teams, we work across many departments, including Brand & Events, Communications, Customer Care, Engineering & Product, Finance, Human Resources, Legal, Marketing & Advertising, Print Operations, and Sales.

Why This Role Matters

We are looking for an Engineering Manager, Subscriber Experiences to lead the team responsible for the platforms and systems that allow The Washington Post's subscription business to operate, scale, and evolve.

This is a high-impact leadership role at the intersection of subscriptions, finance, customer care, enterprise products, Print operations, infrastructure, and business automation. The team owns many of the systems that connect subscriber activity to the rest of the business—from revenue recognition and reconciliation to enterprise subscription management, internal operational tooling, Print fulfillment, and the cloud infrastructure that supports these capabilities.

The work is broad, technically complex, and deeply connected to how the business functions. A successful manager in this role will help shape not only the systems the team builds, but also how The Washington Post operates its subscription business.

The ideal candidate is a strong people leader with deep technical judgment who enjoys working across complex systems, developing engineers, modernizing critical platforms, and turning complicated business processes into reliable and scalable technology. You should be comfortable operating across backend services, frontend applications, cloud infrastructure, production systems, and cross-functional business workflows.

Our backend stack is primarily Java and Node.js, with Java as the primary backend language. Frontend applications are primarily built using React, and our infrastructure and operational environment is centered on AWS, CI/CD automation, Infrastructure as Code, observability, and platforms such as Jenkins and Airflow.

What Motivates You

• You are excited by the opportunity to lead systems that are foundational to how a large subscription business operates.

• You enjoy solving problems that sit at the intersection of technology and real business processes.

• You care deeply about building reliable, scalable, and maintainable systems that other teams and customers depend on.

• You are interested in domains such as subscription operations, financial systems, enterprise products, business automation, and fulfillment.

• You enjoy developing engineers and creating teams with strong ownership, technical judgment, and accountability.

• You are energized by the challenge of modernizing complex systems while continuing to support critical day-to-day operations.

• You can balance immediate business needs with long-term architecture, reliability, security, and technical health.

• You are interested in using AI and automation to reduce operational toil and fundamentally improve how engineering and business workflows are performed.

• You communicate complex technical and business concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.

How You'll Support the Mission

• Lead and develop a team of engineers responsible for critical platforms that support the end-to-end operation of the subscription business.

• Establish clear priorities and empower engineers to independently own complex systems, business capabilities, and technical decisions.

• Set technical direction for systems supporting subscription operations, Finance and Accounting workflows, Customer Care, Enterprise subscriptions, Washington Post Intelligence, strategic partnerships, and Print and Circulation operations.

• Partner closely with Finance and Accounting to ensure that subscription activity is accurately represented in downstream revenue recognition, reconciliation, and financial workflows.

• Guide the evolution of internal platforms and operational tools that allow business teams to manage subscribers, offers, products, delivery operations, agents, and other critical business processes.

• Support the growth of Enterprise Subscriptions, Washington Post Intelligence, and strategic partnerships by building reusable capabilities that enable new business models and integrations.

• Ensure the systems supporting Print operations reliably translate subscription activity into real-world fulfillment, including daily Print draw, delivery routing, agent management, and other Circulation workflows.

• Lead modernization efforts that simplify legacy systems, reduce operational complexity, improve maintainability, and create more reusable platform capabilities.

• Ensure the team's applications and services are reliable, secure, observable, scalable, and production-ready.

• Establish strong engineering practices around architecture, testing, deployment, incident response, observability, and operational ownership.

• Partner with other engineering teams on shared infrastructure, cloud architecture, CI/CD, security, and developer tooling while ensuring the team remains accountable for the systems it owns.

• Identify opportunities to make business capabilities increasingly self-service and programmable, reducing the need for manual intervention or bespoke engineering work.

• Champion thoughtful adoption of AI-assisted engineering tools and agentic workflows to improve development, investigation, remediation, and operational efficiency.

• Help identify opportunities to automate repetitive work such as security findings, accessibility remediation, dependency maintenance, incident investigation, testing, and recurring operational tasks.

• Remain sufficiently close to architecture and implementation to help engineers navigate difficult technical decisions without becoming a bottleneck or primary individual contributor.

The Skills and Experience You Bring

Minimum Qualifications

• BA/BS in Computer Science or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, including experience building and operating production systems.

• 2+ years directly managing software engineers, including coaching, career development, performance management, and technical leadership.

• Strong technical background in backend or full-stack software engineering.

• Experience designing and operating cloud-based systems in AWS or a comparable cloud environment.

• Strong understanding of software architecture, APIs, databases, distributed systems, integrations, and event-driven systems.

• Experience with production operations, observability, incident response, and reliability practices.

• Experience with CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, and modern software delivery practices.

• Sufficient frontend experience to effectively lead teams responsible for full-stack applications and internal business tools.

• Ability to evaluate architecture and engineering tradeoffs and provide meaningful technical guidance without needing to personally implement solutions.

• Demonstrated ability to work effectively with business stakeholders across multiple domains.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills.

• Hands-on experience using AI-assisted engineering tools such as Kiro, GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude, or comparable technologies.

Preferred Qualifications

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience building and operating business-critical systems.

• 4+ years managing software engineers or leading teams spanning multiple technical disciplines.

• Experience leading teams responsible for the full engineering lifecycle, including application development, infrastructure, CI/CD, observability, and production operations.

• Experience with Java, Node.js, React, or comparable modern application technologies.

• Deep experience with AWS and cloud-native architecture.

• Experience with Infrastructure as Code and technologies such as AWS CDK.

• Experience with developer and operational platforms such as Jenkins, Airflow, DataDog, CloudWatch, or comparable technologies.

• Experience with billing, accounting, financial, subscription, or revenue-related systems.

• Experience supporting Enterprise, B2B, partner, or institutional products.

• Experience with internal business platforms or operational tooling.

• Experience leading modernization of complex or long-lived application portfolios.

• Experience using AI and automation to improve engineering workflows, operational processes, security remediation, accessibility, or developer productivity.

Collaboration makes us stronger. That’s why our offices are designed with open layouts, modern technology, and easy access to transportation. With certain exceptions for newsgathering and business travel, we work on-site five days a week.

Compensation and Benefits

Wherever you are in your life or career, The Washington Post offers comprehensive and inclusive benefits for every step of your journey:

• Competitive medical, dental and vision coverage

• Company-paid pension and 401(k) match

• Three weeks of vacation and up to three weeks of paid sick leave

• Nine paid holidays and two personal days

• 20 weeks paid parental leave for any new parent

• Robust mental health resources

• Backup care and caregiver concierge services

• Gender affirming services

• Pet insurance

• Free Post digital subscription

• Leadership and career development programs

Benefits may vary based on the job, full-time or part-time schedule, location, and collectively bargained status.

The salary range for this position is:

$144,600 - $241,100 Annual

The actual salary within this range will depend on individual skills, experience, and qualifications as they relate to specific job requirements. This position may be eligible for a bonus or incentive program, and a member of the Talent Acquisition team will discuss bonus payment terms and conditions during the interview process.