Engineering Manager, Developer Observability

Adyen • San Francisco, CA

4h • $21,500 - $320,000 • Onsite

About The Position

Adyen provides payments, data, and financial products in a single solution for customers like Meta, Uber, H&M, and Microsoft - making us the financial technology platform of choice. At Adyen, everything we do is engineered for ambition. For our teams, we create an environment with opportunities for our people to succeed, backed by the culture and support to ensure they are enabled to truly own their careers. We are motivated individuals who tackle unique technical challenges at scale and solve them as a team. Together, we deliver innovative and ethical solutions that help businesses achieve their ambitions faster.
Engineering Manager, Developer Observability
The mission
We don’t just build APIs; we build the lens through which thousands of global merchants view their integration. As the Engineering manager for developer observability, you will lead a specialized team dedicated to making the "invisible" visible. Your goal is to eliminate the guesswork for developers.
You aren't just managing infrastructure; you are building a product suite that provides real-time clarity. You’ll ensure that when a developer integrates with us, they have the telemetry, debugging tools, and insights to move from "first request" to "production" with zero friction.
The Role
This is a hands-on technical leadership role. You will guide a full-stack team of engineers who balance lean experimentation with the rigors of high-scale reliability. You’ll oversee the systems (PostgreSQL, Kafka, Elasticsearch) that power our API Logs and Developer dashboards, transforming raw data into actionable guidance for our partners.

Requirements

• You believe integration should be effortless. You care about the "inner loop" and the ergonomics of an API.
• You are deeply comfortable with Java, SQL, and distributed systems. You don’t just know how to run a database; you know how to build services on top of it that people love to use.
• You have experience with large-scale systems but prioritize the product knowledge and customer experience over technical complexity for its own sake.
• You thrive in autonomy and ambiguity, and you value diverse perspectives when solving "unsolvable" scaling or UX challenges.
• 5+ years of technical experience, with a significant background as a hands-on Software Engineer.
• 3+ years in a leadership role, managing high-performing engineering teams while maintaining "boots on the ground" technical literacy.
• Proven track record in building developer-facing tools, observability platforms, or high-traffic API products.

Nice To Haves

• Experience in payments or building external-facing developer consoles/dashboards.

Responsibilities

• Maintain a strong product mindset, move beyond standard monitoring to build "Customer-Centric Observability"—tools that tell a developer exactly why a payment failed or how to optimize their integration. You will propose new features and collaboratively shape the future direction of the product.
• You’ll participate in architectural designs and code reviews, ensuring our data tech stack (Kafka/Elasticsearch) delivers near real-time insights at scale (~3.5 billion events weekly growing fast). Act as a technical leader and domain expert for your teams products, challenging and driving technical design and solutions to ensure an exceptionally high technical bar. You will be the point person for product technical decisions, speaking for the product across the organization and to customers.
• We value "live" over "perfect." You will lead your team to ship functionalities within weeks, not months, impacting millions of transactions globally. Work closely with Product Managers to manage project timelines while proactively addressing technical debt, and enforcing best engineering practices.
• Coach, mentor, and build a high-performing team of Backend and Frontend engineers. You will be responsible for continuous performance management, professional development, and maintaining a culture of rapid, top-notch execution.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed