Backend Engineering Manager

Why This Role Exists:

Curately is building the AI-powered future of talent acquisition. Our platform integrates deeply with applicant tracking systems, processes complex data pipelines, and delivers intelligent automation to recruiting teams at scale. As we grow, the complexity of our backend systems is growing with it — microservices, event-driven architectures, critical data migrations, and an expanding web of third-party integrations.

We’re hiring a Backend Engineering Manager to own the technical direction, quality, and velocity of our backend team. This isn’t a project management role with a technical title. We need someone who can read the code, challenge architectural decisions, and raise the bar on engineering excellence — while also building a high-performing, fully remote team that ships reliably.

If you’re the kind of leader who gets energy from solving hard distributed systems problems, mentoring engineers, and building processes that let great teams do their best work — this is your role.

What You’ll Own:

Technical Leadership & Architecture:

• Drive architectural decisions across our Java / Spring Boot microservices platform running on AWS with Kubernetes and Docker.
• Lead the active migration from Microsoft SQL Server to PostgreSQL — defining strategy, managing risk, and ensuring zero disruption to production systems.
• Own the health and evolution of our distributed systems infrastructure: Kafka event streaming, SQS messaging, Lambda functions, and the integration layer connecting to third-party ATSs and AI services.
• Establish and enforce technical standards that ensure our systems are scalable, resilient, and maintainable as the product grows.

Code Quality & Engineering Process:

• Build and own a rigorous code review culture — set expectations for PR size, review turnaround, depth of review, and constructive feedback. This is one of the highest-leverage activities in the role.
• Define and improve engineering processes: sprint planning, release management, incident response, and technical debt prioritization using ClickUp, GitHub, and Slack.
• Be hands-on enough to review critical PRs, identify architectural risks, and unblock engineers when they hit hard technical problems.

Team Management & Growth:

• Lead, mentor, and grow a fully remote backend engineering team. Build trust, accountability, and a strong engineering identity across distributed time zones.
• Delegate with purpose — match assignments to growth opportunities, give real ownership (not just tasks), and develop senior engineers into future technical leaders.
• Run effective 1:1s, provide direct and constructive feedback, and create an environment where engineers are challenged, supported, and doing the best work of their careers.

Prioritization & Execution:

• Balance competing demands: new features, migrations, integration work, technical debt, and operational reliability. Make the hard tradeoffs and communicate them clearly.
• Work closely with product and leadership to translate business priorities into engineering roadmaps with realistic timelines and well-scoped deliverables.
• Protect the team’s focus. Say no to the right things. Shield engineers from context-switching and organizational noise.

AI-Forward Engineering:

• Champion and expand the team’s use of AI-assisted development tools (we’re actively using Claude Code for coding and testing today).
• Develop team standards and review practices for AI-generated code — ensuring quality, security, and maintainability as output velocity increases.
• Stay ahead of the curve on how AI tooling is reshaping software engineering workflows, and bring those insights into how the team operates.

What We’re Looking For:

Must-Haves:

• 7+ years of backend engineering experience with at least 3 years in a leadership or management role.
• Deep hands-on experience with Java and Spring Boot in a microservices architecture.
• Strong production experience with AWS services (ECS/EKS, Lambda, SQS, RDS, and related infrastructure).
• Real-world experience operating distributed systems: event-driven architectures, message queues, asynchronous processing, and the debugging challenges that come with them.
• Experience with Kubernetes and Docker in production environments.
• Proven track record of building and maintaining a high-quality code review culture — not just participating in reviews, but setting the standards and coaching others.
• Experience managing and growing remote engineering teams with strong async communication skills.
• Demonstrated ability to prioritize ruthlessly, make tradeoffs, and communicate decisions to stakeholders with clarity and confidence.
• Experience with relational database management and migrations (our current focus: SQL Server to PostgreSQL).
• Active experience with AI-assisted coding tools and a genuine point of view on how they change engineering workflows.

Strong Advantages:

• Experience building and maintaining integration layers with third-party APIs (especially HR tech, ATSs, or similar SaaS ecosystems).
• Background in AI/ML product companies or experience working closely with AI/ML teams.
• Experience leading a major database migration in a production environment.
• Familiarity with our toolchain: ClickUp, GitHub, Slack, Claude Code.
• Experience scaling engineering teams and processes during periods of rapid product growth.

How We Work:

We’re a 100% remote engineering team. That’s not a perk — it’s how we’re built. We believe the best engineers aren’t limited by geography, and we’ve designed our workflows around that conviction.

• Slack for real-time and async communication.
• ClickUp for project management and sprint tracking.
• GitHub for code collaboration, PRs, and CI/CD.
• Claude Code for AI-assisted development and testing.
• A culture that values clear writing, documented decisions, and trust over surveillance.

Why Curately:

• You’ll shape the technical foundation of an AI product that’s transforming how companies find and hire talent.
• You’ll work with a team that’s already embracing AI-assisted engineering — not debating whether to start.
• You’ll have real ownership and influence over architecture, process, and team culture — not just execute someone else’s playbook.
• You’ll solve genuinely hard problems: distributed systems, complex integrations, data migrations, and the intersection of AI and backend infrastructure.
• Remote-first, trust-based culture with a team that cares about doing great work.