Engineering Manager, Developer Infrastructure at Valon

About the Role: We are seeking an Engineering Manager to lead our Developer Infrastructure team on the Platform organization. You will manage and grow a high-impact team responsible for the systems that shape how every Valon engineer builds, tests, ships, and operates software.

Your responsibilities will include treating developer infrastructure as a product, understanding the needs of engineering teams, defining a clear roadmap, and ensuring the common path is fast, safe, observable, and pleasant. Your scope will cover internal developer tooling such as local development, test infrastructure, CI/CD, release workflows, monitoring and observability, engineering standards, and AI-enabled tools. You will partner closely with application, data, security, and operations teams to enhance the entire software lifecycle.

This is a hands-on leadership role. You will guide architecture decisions, write code or debug systems when necessary, and maintain a close connection to the developer experience you are improving. Additionally, you will focus on recruiting, coaching, giving feedback, and helping engineers thrive through 360-degree feedback and continuous development.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead and grow a team of engineers focused on developer infrastructure, platform tooling, and internal developer experience.
• Own the technical strategy, planning, and execution for the developer platform, emphasizing reliability, security, usability, and measurable productivity gains.
• Act as a strong technical mentor and hands-on contributor, guiding architecture, writing code, and debugging systems.
• Collaborate with engineering leaders and teams across the company to identify friction points and deliver high-leverage improvements.
• Build mechanisms for prioritization, platform adoption, service ownership, and continuous feedback from internal customers.
• Establish and evolve engineering processes that improve velocity, quality, and operational readiness.
• Invest in recruiting and developing talent through coaching, mentorship, and ongoing feedback.
• Promote a high-agency, high-accountability culture with clear communication and pragmatic decision-making.

Examples of Work on the Roadmap:

• Making integration tests easy to create, discover, and run in CI.
• Enabling safe online database schema migrations via Vitess.
• Ensuring web clients are compatible with the GraphQL schema before deployment, and vice versa.
• Reducing local setup time and improving the reliability of development environments.
• Building actionable observability and release feedback loops to help engineers diagnose and fix issues quickly.
• Adopting AI tooling that improves engineering throughput while preserving quality, security, and appropriate controls.

Ideal Background:

• 6+ years of software engineering experience, including 2+ years leading and developing engineering teams.
• Experience building or operating developer platforms, internal tools, CI/CD systems, test infrastructure, release automation, or observability systems.
• Strong systems thinking and understanding of how developer workflows, application architecture, and production infrastructure fit together.
• Hands-on experience with cloud providers such as AWS or GCP, containerization like Docker or Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, and modern observability stacks.
• A product mindset and ability to translate internal customer needs into simple, scalable technical solutions.
• Track record of leading teams in fast-paced, high-growth environments and aligning partners around a shared roadmap.
• Demonstrated ability to mentor and grow engineers while fostering a high-performance, feedback-driven team culture.
• Excellent communication skills and a bias toward action, learning, and continuous improvement.