Manager III, Software Development - Content Data Platform
About The Position
onX is seeking a Software Development Manager to lead the Content Data Platform team -- the engineering team responsible for the data infrastructure that puts accurate, current, and complete content on onX's maps. You'll lead a cross-functional team of data engineers and geospatial analysts who own the full map content data lifecycle: ingesting authoritative data from hundreds of sources, conflating multi-source inputs into a canonical truth with per-fact provenance, and delivering consistent outputs to every downstream consumer. This is a high-impact role at the center of onX's content strategy, operating within the Content Engineering organization and reporting to the Director of Engineering. As an onX Software Development Manager, your day to day responsibilities would look like: (Essential Job Duties) Make great engineers better. You'll support your teammates with individual goal-setting, professional development, and mentoring. You'll coach engineers through structured growth plans and partner with senior/staff-level ICs to set technical direction for the team. Deliver the platform. Collaborating with the Data Engineering team, you'll drive delivery of the Content Foundation roadmap: extending our unified data ingestion platform to all content types, proving fact-level provenance on land ownership data at a national scale, and establishing versioned data contracts with downstream consumers. Build great teams. You'll work closely with your peers to hire smart, creative, and kind engineers. You'll be responsible for building and sustaining a healthy team culture where ownership and collaboration are the norm. You’ll mentor across disciplinary lines: geospatial domain experts are your partners, and you’ll raise the bar on data quality craft and engineering best practices across that boundary, not just within your direct team. Drive cross-team convergence. You'll partner with the Data & Analytics EM to converge on shared Lakehouse infrastructure, a shared metadata and lineage platform, a unified analytics infrastructure, and consistent environment patterns across teams. Own operational excellence. You'll establish and maintain production reliability practices, including SLO definition, monitoring, and alerting, incident management, on-call sustainability, and postmortem culture for a platform that directly affects the accuracy of maps used by millions of hunters, anglers, and outdoor enthusiasts. Embed quality as a platform constraint. You’ll drive a shift-left approach to data quality: schema contracts enforced at ingestion, registration with metadata store, automated validation gates before data reaches downstream consumers, and SLOs tied to data freshness and completeness, not just platform uptime. You hold the bar for data quality and governance high and don’t let it slip under delivery pressure. Translate and communicate. You'll translate business strategy and content team priorities into clear engineering direction, helping your team understand why their work matters. You'll articulate the value of platform investments to stakeholders who care about outcomes like fresher trail data or more accurate land ownership boundaries -- not pipeline architecture. You're effective in a matrixed environment where your ability to influence without authority matters as much as your ability to execute Collaborate. You'll serve as the engineering interface for vertical product teams (Hunt, Offroad, Fish, Backcountry), data delivery, and the geospatial editing team. You'll manage dependencies, push back on one-off pipeline requests in favor of durable platform capabilities, and maintain high cross-functional alignment.
Requirements
- At least five (5) years of experience directly managing software engineers.
- Proven experience leading teams building data platform or data infrastructure systems.
- Experience leading a team through migration off a legacy system to modern infrastructure.
- Proven track record of breaking down large, long-horizon projects into milestones that deliver incremental business value.
- Managed or closely partnered with cross-functional teams that aren't organized along traditional engineering/analytics lines.
- Strong hiring and team development instincts.
- Ability to engage substantively on architectural decisions and challenge existing assumptions.
- Communicate well with executives and non-technical stakeholders.
- Comfortable using AI-assisted tools to improve engineering productivity and help the team adopt them effectively.
- A shared passion for and ability to demonstrate onX's Company Values.
- Permanent US work authorization.
- Ability to travel for multiple days to a corporate office or other onX strategic location.
Nice To Haves
- Experience with the GCP data stack: Managed Spark BigQuery, BigLake, Pub/Sub, Managed Airflow.
- Familiarity with Apache Iceberg, Spark/PySpark, DuckDB, dbt, and Airflow.
- Exposure to geospatial data processing (GDAL, PostGIS, Apache Sedona, DuckDB spatial extensions).
- Familiarity with Knowledge Graph architectures or graph data models.
- Experience managing teams in an outdoor, mapping, or location technology context.
- A B.S. or M.S. in computer science, data engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
Responsibilities
- Make great engineers better by supporting teammates with individual goal-setting, professional development, and mentoring.
- Coach engineers through structured growth plans and partner with senior/staff-level ICs to set technical direction for the team.
- Drive delivery of the Content Foundation roadmap, extending the unified data ingestion platform, proving fact-level provenance on land ownership data, and establishing versioned data contracts.
- Work closely with peers to hire smart, creative, and kind engineers and build/sustain a healthy team culture.
- Mentor across disciplinary lines, raising the bar on data quality craft and engineering best practices.
- Partner with the Data & Analytics EM to converge on shared Lakehouse infrastructure, metadata and lineage platform, unified analytics infrastructure, and consistent environment patterns.
- Establish and maintain production reliability practices, including SLO definition, monitoring, alerting, incident management, on-call sustainability, and postmortem culture.
- Drive a shift-left approach to data quality, enforcing schema contracts, registration with metadata store, automated validation gates, and SLOs tied to data freshness and completeness.
- Translate business strategy and content team priorities into clear engineering direction.
- Articulate the value of platform investments to stakeholders.
- Serve as the engineering interface for vertical product teams, data delivery, and the geospatial editing team.
- Manage dependencies, push back on one-off pipeline requests in favor of durable platform capabilities, and maintain high cross-functional alignment.
Benefits
- Competitive salaries
- Annual bonuses
- Equity
- Opportunities for growth
- Comprehensive health benefits including a no-monthly-cost medical plan
- Parental leave plan of 5 or 13 weeks fully paid
- 401k matching at 100% for the first 3% you save and 50% from 3-5%
- Company-wide outdoor adventures and amazing outdoor industry perks
- Annual “Get Out, Get Active” funds
- Flexible time away package that includes PTO, STO, VTO, quiet weeks, and floating holidays
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Manager
Education Level
Associate degree
