Engineering Manager, Observe (NZT-PST)

Location: NZT-PST

Hi there!

We're looking for an Engineering Manager to join the team at Zapier. We’re on a mission to make everyone more productive at work. Zapier has helped millions of people build businesses through the power of automation.

Zapier’s Observe team (hiring NZT-PST) is on a mission to revolutionize admins’ interaction with our platform, focusing on enhancing visibility, insights, and trust. Our aim includes:

• Identifying opportunities to provide admins with real-time insights into task usage and performance, increasing value awareness across Zapier.
• Collaborating closely with Design, Product, and Engineering to create an intuitive, user-centric experience.
• Owning the entire process of notification management, performance reporting, and log content refinement.
• Continuously innovating and implementing new features such as a resolution center and alarm capabilities to proactively manage potential issues.
• Constantly sharing learnings and insights with other teams, promoting knowledge exchange within Zapier.

We’re a globally distributed team, from New Zealand to the Americas, working together to make Zapier the trusted, go-to partner for business automation.

If you’re interested in advancing your career at a fast-growing, profitable, impact-driven company, then read on…

Our Commitment to Applicants

Culture and Values at Zapier

Zapier Guide to Remote Work

Zapier Code of Conduct

Diversity and Inclusivity at Zapier

About You

• You are an effective team builder. This isn't your first rodeo. You have at least four years of experience managing teams of at least 4-5 engineers Backend & Frontend Engineers. You know how to hire, train, and develop engineers from all backgrounds. You understand the benefits of building a diverse and inclusive engineering team.
• You have experience with experimentation. Utilizing experiments to drive continuous improvements.  These include a combination of bold changes (”shark bites”) and smaller improvements (”fish bites”).  You understand how to optimize for rapid experimentation and follow-up iteration.
• You’re a product thinker. As an Engineering Manager, you’ve worked to set goals, metrics, and a strategy for a product-focused Engineering team. You push your team to prioritize impactful work to meet the company’s goals.  You can articulate how engineering-driven projects (aka addressing tech debt) help the team meet team and company goals, and can work with your product counterpart to prioritize them appropriately.
• You can keep track of, prioritize, and lead multiple projects. There's no shortage of things you could be doing in a day. You'll carve out time for functional projects and make sure they solve real problems the team faces -- ideally making development even easier.
• You have excellent communication skills. You regularly work with engineers and other stakeholders from various disciplines, balancing engineering concerns, such as technical debt, with product concerns. Ideally, you find solutions that address both the team and user needs, but if not, help build understanding around difficult decisions.
• You are a skilled engineering leader. You've got a strong background in leading a team of Engineers working in our stack (Python, Django or React, AWS infrastructure, etc.).  You understand how your team’s services work and can provide feedback on designs proposed by your engineers. You hold a high standard for operational excellence, monitoring service health and addressing issues.
• You're adaptable. You've been in fast-growing companies and know how to build, change, and adapt to the needs of a company as it grows.

Things You'll Do

• Work closely with your engineering function, peer design function, and product function to create a trio that tackles user problems and solutions.
• Develop effective ways to communicate, monitor, and lead your team through weekly one-on-ones and team meetings.
• Keep the leadership team informed on your team’s progress in ways that are easy and enjoyable to receive, like one-on-ones, update posts, and regular team hangouts.
• Build rapport with each member of the Engineering Team and support them through coaching and mentorship to help level up their skills.
• Drive continuous improvement thro