Manager, Software Engineering (Tier-2) - Buyer Cloud- Onsite 2 Days in Chicago - FreeWheel

About the role

The Manager, Software Engineering (Tier-2) leads the Buyer Cloud Tier-2 Engineering team and provides technical and operational leadership for the Buyer Cloud platform. This hands-on leadership role is responsible for the availability, latency, performance, efficiency, change management, monitoring, emergency response, and operational excellence of the Buyer Cloud platform. The manager drives end-to-end operational support across Buyer Cloud services, partners closely with Engineering, Engineering Support, Client Services, Product, and other cross-functional teams, and ensures timely resolution of customer-facing production issues. The Manager will develop deep expertise in the Buyer Cloud business domain, system architecture, and application workflows to lead complex technical investigations, drive automation, operational improvements, and continuously improve platform reliability and customer experience. This role combines technical leadership, people management, and operational ownership while remaining actively engaged in production support and engineering initiatives.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop the Buyer Cloud Tier-2 Engineering team by providing technical leadership, coaching, mentoring, performance management, and career development
• Own end-to-end operational support for the Buyer Cloud platform, ensuring platform reliability, operational readiness, and customer satisfaction
• Partner closely with Engineering and Engineering Support teams to investigate complex production issues, drive root cause analysis (RCA), remediation planning, and long-term reliability improvements
• Provide hands-on technical leadership during major production incidents, customer escalations, and Live Events, coordinating cross-functional teams to drive timely resolution and stakeholder communication
• Collaborate with Client Services, Product, Engineering, and external partners to deliver scalable and reliable technical solutions
• Drive operational excellence through continuous improvements in incident management, monitoring, automation, observability, and engineering support processes
• Lead complex customer escalations and technical investigations across Buyer Cloud services
• Build and prioritize automation initiatives that improve operational efficiency and reduce manual effort
• Analyze operational metrics, incident trends, platform health, and customer issues to identify risks and drive continuous service improvements
• Establish operational best practices, documentation standards, and knowledge-sharing processes across the Tier-2 organization
• Participate in release planning, production readiness reviews, deployment validation, and post-release monitoring
• Participate in on-call rotations and provide technical leadership during critical production incidents when required

Qualifications

• Strong coding, debugging, and troubleshooting skills in Go (Golang), Python, and/or Java
• Experience developing, operating, and supporting distributed systems and cloud-native backend services
• Strong understanding of distributed architectures, microservices, APIs, and large-scale production environments
• Proficiency in SQL and database technologies
• Experience supporting applications in AWS or OCI, including services such as EC2, VPC, S3, IAM, Route 53, and Lambda
• Experience with automation, monitoring, observability, and incident management platforms
• Familiarity with CI/CD and SDLC tools (Docker, Kubernetes, Jenkins, Git, Ansible)
• Strong Linux, networking, database, and infrastructure fundamentals
• Experience leading complex technical troubleshooting, root cause analysis (RCA), and operational improvements
• Demonstrated ability to balance hands-on technical responsibilities with people management