Senior Engineering Manager - Conversation Application

Crisis Text Line, Inc. • Austin, TX

2d • Remote

About The Position

At Crisis Text Line, our mission is to promote mental well-being for people wherever they are. Our technology powers life-saving crisis support across the U.S. and around the world, connecting people to trained counselors when they need help most.
Our Build department brings together engineering, product, and design to create the most trusted and effective crisis care platform in the industry. Together, we are building technology that enables safe, reliable crisis conversations, empowers global affiliates to operate support services, and advances a services- and API-first architecture that integrates data and predictive insights across the platform.
We are seeking an exceptional Senior Engineering Manager to lead the Conversation Applications Team (CAT) — the team responsible for the systems that power real-time crisis conversations.
This leader will guide the evolution of our Crisis Care Platform, helping transition legacy PHP services to Go-based systems, while strengthening our API-first architecture, platform reliability, observability, and engineering delivery practices.
The role combines architectural thinking with strong people leadership, mentoring a high-performing engineering team and partnering closely with Product, Clinical, Data, and Infrastructure teams to build systems that enable life-saving support at scale.

Requirements

• 5+ years building and operating backend or platform systems in production
• 3+ years of engineering management leading teams and delivering complex initiatives
• Experience modernizing legacy systems and leading architectural migrations (e.g., PHP → Go, monolith → services)
• Strong knowledge of distributed systems, API-first architecture, and service design
• Experience with AWS, Terraform, CI/CD pipelines, GraphQL, and relational databases
• Ability to guide teams on AWS reliability, security, and cost best practices
• Experience establishing automated testing practices (unit, integration, contract, and end-to-end testing)
• Experience improving system reliability and observability (logging, monitoring, telemetry, performance tuning)
• Strong planning, prioritization, and execution in sprint-based development environments
• Reliable High-Speed Internet Required: Must have a stable high-speed internet connection to support seamless remote collaboration, virtual meetings, online job tasks, etc.

Nice To Haves

• Architectural familiarity with Go, PHP, and React (hands-on coding not required).
• Experience leading platform modernization efforts in complex or mission-critical environments.
• Ability to balance innovation, reliability, and technical debt management in architectural decision-making.

Responsibilities

• Lead the modernization of core platform services (PHP → Go), defining service boundaries, architectural patterns, and dependency sequencing across routing, counselor tools, and shared services.
• Standardize CI/CD, deployments, observability, logging, and telemetry across AWS- and Go-based environments to enable reliable, predictable operations.
• Establish SLAs, incident management practices, performance baselines, and monitoring frameworks to strengthen system resilience, reliability, and error visibility.
• Drive platform maturity from ~2/5 to ~4/5 by implementing engineering standards, documentation patterns, and consistent service quality across the squad.
• Own the technology strategy and develop a plan to modernize core platform services (PHP → Go), defining service boundaries, architectural patterns, and dependency sequencing across the CTL platform, volunteer management lifecycle, and other core services.
• Own the execution and delivery of client-facing features by leading an engineering team committed to quality, velocity, and customer impact.
• Own the technology strategy and develop a plan to modernize core platform services (PHP → Go), defining service boundaries, architectural patterns, and dependency sequencing across the CTL platform, volunteer management lifecycle, and other core services.
• Partner with Product, Developer Platform, DevOps/SRE, and Security to align on shared infrastructure, governance, roadmap priorities, and technical dependencies.
• Collaborate with Data Engineering, Research, and Analytics to ensure cross-service reliability, performant data flows, and architectural alignment across the Build department.
• Lead and mentor a team of 6–8 engineers, supporting growth in architectural thinking, system ownership, delivery discipline, and engineering excellence.
• Set clear expectations, provide thoughtful and actionable feedback, and cultivate a culture of reliability, autonomy, innovation, and strong documentation practices.
• Serve as a coaching-focused, people-first leader who brings structure, clarity, and calm to complex platform and migration work.
• Communicate with empathy while maintaining high standards, thriving in ambiguity, and modeling the team’s expected documentation, reliability, and engineering discipline.

Benefits

• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision options that prioritize accessibility and financial peace of mind
• Employer-funded HSA contributions
• Generous PTO, sick time, and 19 paid holidays with a winter break
• 12 weeks of fully paid parental leave after 26 consecutive weeks of service
• Monthly internet and mental health stipends
• Annual Wellness Stipend
• Home office and professional development stipends
• 403(b) retirement plan with employer contribution
• Sabbatical after 3 years of service

What This Job Offers

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