Senior Engineering Manager

Summary

Join Thinkific's Platform team as a Senior Engineering Manager and lead the technical vision, strategy, and execution for the infrastructure and architecture supporting thousands of online course creators. Drive improvements in reliability and performance, build a culture of continuous improvement, and lead a team of senior and staff engineers. Design and evolve the architecture, build, scale, and optimize a reliable, secure, and developer-friendly platform. Own the platform engineering roadmap, define long-term technical direction, and mentor engineers. Define and improve Developer Experience (DevEx), collaborate with cross-functional teams, and cultivate a culture of reliability and observability. Set and track meaningful SLOs/SLIs and communicate platform initiatives effectively. This role requires 10+ years of experience in infrastructure, platform engineering, or software engineering, including 5+ years managing engineering teams. Thinkific offers a competitive compensation package, flexible paid time off, health benefits, flexible work options, learning and growth opportunities, and a supportive work environment.

Requirements

• Has 10+ years of infrastructure, platform engineering, or software engineering experience, including 5+ years managing engineering teams
• Possesses extensive hands-on experience with Kubernetes (EKS), AWS infrastructure (EKS, RDS, IAM, ALB, S3) and Terraform-based infrastructure as code
• Demonstrates strong understanding and practical experience with observability tools (New Relic) and can effectively leverage them for reliability and performance insights
• Is experienced in leveraging structured frameworks like SPACE and DORA to measure and improve Developer Experience, productivity and operational outcomes
• Has significant experience leading teams responsible for managing large-scale distributed systems and infrastructure that supports diverse technical stacks
• Is an effective communicator, collaborator and strategic thinker, able to clearly articulate platform vision to technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Brings a deep sense of ownership, accountability and passion for reliability and developer productivity

Responsibilities

• Own the platform engineering roadmap , driving strategic initiatives to ensure our Kubernetes and AWS-based infrastructure meets high standards for reliability, security, and scalability
• Help define our long term technical direction to bring clarity and alignment across our engineering organization
• Lead and mentor engineers and Staff SREs , helping them manage technical domains effectively, raise the technical bar and enhance overall team capabilities
• Define, track, and improve Developer Experience (DevEx) , using metrics frameworks such as CORE4, SPACE and DORA, ensuring engineering teams are productive, efficient, and satisfied
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams (engineering, product management, security) to design robust CI/CD pipelines, automate operations and implement secure-by-default practices
• Cultivate a culture of reliability and observability , championing proactive incident management, blameless postmortems and continuous learning
• Set and track meaningful SLOs/SLIs , ensuring that observability practices provide deep insights into infrastructure performance and reliability
• Communicate clearly and proactively , maintaining alignment between platform initiatives and broader company strategy

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Ruby on Rails or Node.js in production environments
• Familiarity with secure software supply chains, Cloudflare configurations and advanced CDN/load balancing strategies
• Exposure to managing multi-tenant Kubernetes clusters or complex networking environments

Benefits

• A competitive compensation package including base salary, equity, team-wide bonuses, and an Employee Share Purchase Plan
• Flexible Paid Time Off to maintain mental and physical health. Our team is encouraged to take a minimum 4 weeks of vacation, plus Thinker Holidays (extended long weekends in the summer) and time off for the December holiday season
• Health Benefits and Wellness: Comprehensive benefits starting on Day 1 include health, vision, and dental coverage for you and your family, $3,000 for mental health care, a short-term health plan, and an additional health or personal spending account. Plus, family friendly benefits include generous parental leave top-ups for up to 32 weeks, as well as fertility coverage and personalized return to work options
• Flexible Work . Choose to work from home from anywhere in Canada, at our Vancouver HQ, a co-working space, or anywhere there’s wifi for a change of scenery
• Learning & Growth. An annual $1500 USD Learn and Grow fund for conferences, seminars, or courses, plus training, mentorship, coaching, and internal promotion opportunities
• A home office setup so you’re ready to succeed with a company-owned Macbook Pro and a budget to order a desk, chair, or any accessories to help you work comfortably and productively