Software Engineering Manager (Data)

Core Responsibilities

• Manage and build a team of high-performing engineers, providing mentorship and guidance to accelerate their growth.
• Collaborate with our Product and Go-To-Market teams to define technical roadmaps.
• Ensure the team delivers best-in-class results at high velocity while continuously raising the bar for quality and performance.
• Establish and refine engineering processes, agile rituals, and use of AI to accelerate development and expand our core capabilities.
• Actively engage the architecture and codebase, contribute to high-impact features, and help resolve critical technical challenges.

Candidate Profile

• Experience: 7+ years in software engineering with 2+ years in a people management role.
• Educational Background: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, STEM, or a related field.
• Software Development: Strong experience with distributed systems and web applications using Go, Rust, or Python.
• Data Expertise: Experience with in-stream processing (Apache Kafka, Flink, Beam), familiarity with specialized databases like PostgreSQL, Druid, Pinot, or Timescale, and expertise in data exploration tools such as Grafana or Jupyter Notebooks.
• Leadership: Proven ability to guide teams through ambiguity and a track record of being a "force multiplier" for engineering talent.
• Bonus Points: Experience in Aerospace, Autonomous Vehicles, Robotics, Defense or Energy, experience in leading AI-first teams and AI initiatives, background in Data Science, Statistics or other academic fields that work with data, and experience in building UI and customer-facing dashboards for interacting with data.

Candidate Profile (continued)

• Experience: Must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, or protected individual such as an asylee or refugee in compliance with ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) / EAR (Export Administration Regulations) regulations.

Engineering At Sift

• You'll have the opportunity to help evolve and scale our platform because we're still in the early stages of building the product.
• Relevant technologies include: Web frontend & backend: React, TypeScript, Redux, Tailwind, WebAssembly, D3.js, WebGL, and Go, Data: Parquet, Flink, Kafka, Redpanda, Beam, DuckDB, Timescale, QuestDB, InfluxDB, and Druid, Infrastructure: GitHub Actions, AWS, Azure, GCP, Docker, Kubernetes, and Terraform.

Why Join Sift?

• Real Impact: Build the infrastructure that enables the next generation of aerospace and robotic breakthroughs.
• Awesome Talent: Work alongside veterans from NASA JPL, SpaceX, and the Defense Intelligence Agency.
• Vibrant Culture: Develop great things with people who all love what they are doing.
• In-Person Collaboration: Join us in our Marina Del Rey office (2x per week) to stay close to the hardware companies we serve.
• Comprehensive Benefits: Unlimited PTO, equity ownership, 401(k), and full medical/dental/vision coverage.

Location

• Sift’s headquarters is in Marina Del Rey, CA (Next to LAX).
• We collaborate in person twice a week—on Mondays and Thursdays—and come together for a full week every two months.
• We are open to relocating candidates to LA or working from our San Francisco office for the right candidate.

Pay

Salary range: $200,000 - $300,000 per year. Plus equity and benefits.