Senior Production Engineering Manager

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in Australia.

📋 Description

• Oversee the Embedded team, one of the two groups within Production Engineering.

• Guide a technically proficient team of engineers as they tackle Canva's production challenges.

• Protect essential data.

• Enhance the safety of software modifications.

• Integrate reliability and observability into a significant platform overhaul.

• Develop tools and frameworks to bolster service resilience during overload situations.

• Build trust with engineering leaders and influence teams beyond your direct reporting line.

• Assist engineers in navigating various technical and organizational landscapes.

• Maintain close involvement in the work to challenge assumptions and shape technical decisions.

• Determine which challenges the team will address, how engagements will be conducted, success metrics, and anticipated impact.

• Foster an environment that enables experienced engineers to excel.

• Set a clear direction, cultivate psychological safety, provide direct coaching, and nurture senior engineers.

• Concentrate Embedded efforts on high-impact production issues and ensure measurable outcomes.

• Establish a scalable engagement model without compromising technical quality, coaching effectiveness, or partnerships.

• Transform lessons learned from engagements into reusable engineering practices, patterns, and capabilities.

• Mentor senior engineers and engagement leads to become future technical leaders.

• Collaborate with Canva's Reliability Platform subgroup and the broader Infra supergroup.

⛳️ Requirements

• Proven experience leading highly skilled software engineers and technical leads through complex or ambiguous projects.

• Experience in coaching individuals who operate with a high degree of autonomy.

• Background in software environments where reliability, scalability, and production risk are critical.

• Demonstrated ability to build trust and establish authority where influence is more significant than formal reporting structures.

• Experience in leading substantial technical initiatives across multiple teams or groups.

• Proven track record in convincing teams to alter their software development or operational practices.

• Ability to articulate complex technical trade-offs to senior stakeholders.

• Solid grounding in computer science fundamentals, including concurrency, multithreading, and data structures.

• Expertise in Go, Python, Java, or C++.

• Strong understanding of system internals, networking, and cloud platforms such as AWS or GCP.

• Proficient in systems thinking, encompassing system design, architecture, and engineering patterns.

• Familiarity with observability, capacity, failure modes, and operational characteristics of production systems.

• Experience in large-scale or high-stakes environments.

• Nice to have: previous SRE/PE management experience.

• Nice to have: experience with large-scale storage, CDN, networking, or distributed infrastructure.

• Nice to have: history of developing senior engineers and technical leads.

• Nice to have: experience defining the identity, operating model, or scope of a technical function.

🏝️ Benefits

• Equity packages.

• Inclusive parental leave policy that supports all parents and caregivers.

• Annual Vibe & Thrive allowance to promote wellbeing, social connection, office setup, and more.

• Flexible leave options.

• Virtual interviews.