Senior Engineering Manager, Data Engineering

Ridgeline•San Ramon, CA

5d•$212,000 - $250,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Are you a seasoned engineering leader with deep experience in distributed systems and event-driven architectures? Do you thrive on building successful, thriving teams while defining architectural standards that scale across a growing platform? Are you excited to shape the foundation of unified data access, streaming infrastructure, and durable state systems in a modern cloud-native environment? If so, we invite you to be a part of our innovative team. As a Senior Engineering Manager spanning Data Engineering at Ridgeline, you will oversee a team responsible for building and evolving the unified data access and event-driven interaction layer across the firm. This team governs how services interact with durable state systems, streaming infrastructure, and federated query engines while maintaining strong guarantees around reliability, performance, and observability. You will provide technical leadership to teams developing innovative, enterprise-grade systems using cutting-edge technologies—including AI tools like GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT—to enhance development velocity, architectural clarity, and operational excellence. Your work will directly improve consistency, scalability, and long-term maintainability across the platform. At Ridgeline, how we work matters as much as what we build. Ridgeliners act like owners, choose growth over comfort, and communicate with transparency. We assume positive intent, bias toward action, and bring solutions—not just problems. We celebrate wins, learn from setbacks, and thrive in a resilient, collaborative, high-performing culture. If this excites you, we’d love to meet you. You must be work authorized in the United States without the need for employer sponsorship.

Requirements

8+ years of software engineering experience with at least 3+ years managing engineering teams
Strong background in distributed systems and backend platform architecture
Experience operating or managing large-scale messaging systems such as Kafka
Experience with change data capture technologies such as Debezium and event-driven architectures
Familiarity with replication services or systems that propagate state changes across durable stores
Experience improving reliability and performance of streaming pipelines and event processing systems
Experience building or managing abstraction layers that standardize access to storage and messaging systems
Demonstrated ability to guide cross-team initiatives and influence without direct authority
Experience operating high-availability systems with strict reliability and performance requirements
Excellent communication skills and a passion for mentoring engineers and technical leaders
Willingness to learn about cutting-edge technologies while cultivating expertise in the investment management domain
Strong problem-solving skills and a serious interest in having fun at work

Nice To Haves

Experience with schema registries and event contract governance
Experience with multi-region replication and disaster recovery strategies
Background in query federation engines such as Trino or Presto
Familiarity with regulated environments or financial systems
Experience evolving custom replication services into standardized backbone solutions

Responsibilities

Oversee and grow a team responsible for defining standardized patterns for data access, event propagation, and streaming interactions
Establish architectural standards that reduce direct coupling to storage systems and messaging infrastructure
Guide consistency across synchronous low-latency CRUD and asynchronous event-driven interaction models
Improve reliability, performance, and observability across data access and streaming systems
Partner with senior engineers to shape long-term architectural direction across data engineering
Reduce redundant integration patterns and consolidate access and event abstractions
Mentor engineers and cultivate a culture of technical thoroughness, operational excellence, and ownership
Collaborate with product and engineering leadership to align platform investments with company objectives
Hire, coach, and retain top engineering talent while fostering a transparent and growth-oriented environment
Contribute to a collaborative culture rooted in learning, teaching, resilience, and shared success