Senior Manager of Microservices

Realtor.com Careers•Austin, TX

5d•Hybrid

About The Position

Recognized as the No. 1 site trusted by real estate professionals, Realtor.com® has been at the forefront of online real estate for over 25 years, connecting buyers, sellers, and renters with trusted insights and expert guidance to find their perfect home. Through its robust suite of tools, Realtor.com® not only makes a significant impact on the real estate industry at large, but for consumers, navigating the biggest purchase they will make in their life, by providing a user experience that is easy to use, easy to understand, and most of all, easy to make decisions. Join us on our mission to empower more people to find their way home by breaking barriers to entry, making the right connections, and building confidence through expert guidance. We're looking for a Senior Manager of Microservices to lead three critical platform engineering teams that provide enterprise-grade "paved path" solutions for API routing, GraphQL federation, and security/bot protection serving 600+ developers and millions of users daily. This role will build and scale the Frontdoor (API Gateway), our GraphQL Federation layer, and Product Security & Bot Protection teams - managing 8-12 talented individual contributors who maintain and enhance core infrastructure enabling secure, scalable service delivery across Realtor.com You will be responsible for the strategic direction, continuous enhancement, and operational excellence of our API gateway infrastructure (Tyk), GraphQL federation layer (Apollo), and security perimeter (Kasada). This includes recruiting and developing engineering talent, driving adoption of platform capabilities, leading legacy system retirements (rdc-x-api, Hestia/Kasbah, PerimeterX), and ensuring high availability for systems processing millions of daily API requests. You'll partner closely with Platform Reliability Engineering, Security, and product teams while maintaining deep technical expertise in routing, APIs, and security architecture.

Requirements

8+ years in software engineering, platform engineering, or infrastructure roles with focus on distributed systems, APIs, or security
3+ years leading engineering teams as a manager of individual contributors
Expert-level knowledge in at least two domains: API Gateway technologies (Tyk, Kong, Apigee), GraphQL and Apollo Federation, or security engineering and bot protection (Kasada, PerimeterX, Cloudflare)
Deep understanding of RESTful and GraphQL API design, authentication/authorization (OAuth 2.0, JWT), request routing and rate limiting, and cloud infrastructure (AWS/Kubernetes/EKS)
Proven track record building and scaling engineering teams, delivering complex platform initiatives, and operating production systems at scale (high traffic, high availability)
Experience leading platform migrations, legacy system retirements, and technology evaluations
Strong communication skills with ability to explain complex technical concepts to diverse audiences; experience with incident management and operational excellence
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent experience

Nice To Haves

Experience managing teams supporting 500+ developers or large-scale platform organizations
Hands-on experience with Tyk API Gateway, Apollo Federation, and Kasada specifically
Background in security engineering, application security, fraud prevention, or identity management
Experience with observability platforms (NewRelic, Datadog), CI/CD systems (Argo CD, CircleCI), and FinOps/cost optimization
Knowledge of service mesh technologies (Istio), chaos engineering, and resilience testing
Prior experience in real estate technology, e-commerce, or high-traffic consumer web platforms
Contributions to open-source API management or GraphQL projects; technical certifications in AWS, Kubernetes, or security

Responsibilities

Team Leadership & Development Build and lead three specialized platform teams (Frontdoor, Pantheon, Product Security) with 8-12 individual contributors
Recruit, mentor, and retain top engineering talent with expertise in API management, GraphQL federation, and security engineering
Create career development frameworks and technical growth paths; conduct 1:1s, performance reviews, and team planning
Foster a culture of technical excellence, ownership, and developer-first thinking across platform services
Establish team structures and on-call rotations that balance operational excellence with innovation
Platform Strategy & Enhancement Define and execute strategic roadmaps for Frontdoor (Tyk API Gateway), Apollo Federation, and Product Security platforms
Drive adoption of "paved path" solutions across 600+ developer organization with focus on developer experience, self-service, and scalability
Enhance existing platform capabilities including authentication/authorization, rate limiting, GraphQL schema federation, and bot protection
Balance production system maintenance with feature development, technical debt reduction, and platform modernization
Evaluate and recommend new technologies (Kong, MCP on GraphQL gateway, security tools); drive POCs and architecture decisions
Partner with engineering and product leadership to align platform capabilities with business priorities
Legacy System Retirement & Modernization Lead retirement of legacy systems
Develop migration strategies, coordinate with stakeholders, and execute safe transitions minimizing business disruption
Drive deprecation timelines, communication plans, and stakeholder management for platform changes
Ensure knowledge transfer, documentation, and runbook updates during modernization initiatives
Technical Leadership & Operations Provide hands-on technical guidance on complex API routing, GraphQL federation, OAuth, and security architecture challenges
Establish SLOs, monitoring, and observability practices for platform services; lead incident response and post-mortems
Champion best practices for API design, GraphQL schema management, rate limiting strategies, and security controls
Drive automation, infrastructure as code, and operational efficiency improvements
Maintain expertise across Tyk Gateway, Apollo Federation, Kasada, AWS (EKS, CloudFront, WAF), and Kubernetes
Represent platform capabilities in architectural reviews and technical planning with cross-functional teams
Cross-Functional Collaboration Partner with Platform Reliability Engineering, Quality Engineering Operations, and Infrastructure teams on reliability initiatives
Collaborate with Security and Compliance teams on OAuth migrations, secrets management, and security standards
Support Application Engineering teams consuming platform services; gather feedback and prioritize platform enhancements
Communicate platform roadmaps, incidents, and changes to stakeholders; contribute to technology leadership forums