Manager, Software Engineering

About this role

About Backblaze

Backblaze provides reliable, high-availability cloud storage trusted by consumers, SMBs, enterprises, and developers in over 150 countries. Our B2 Cloud Storage platform supports data-intensive workloads including backup, media, analytics, and modern AI pipelines. We build durable, scalable systems with a strong emphasis on developer experience, product quality, and operational efficiency.

Role Overview:

We are looking for a Software Development Manager to lead an engineering team contributing to Backblaze cloud services. Your team will work across both customer-facing features and platform infrastructure, collaborating closely with Product, QA, and other engineering teams to ship reliable, high-quality software.

This is a hands-on management role. You are expected to participate actively in architecture discussions, code reviews, and technical decisions. The right candidate brings deep expertise in system architecture, a strong grasp of the full software development lifecycle, and proven ability to lead distributed, remote-first engineering teams. You bring 3+ years of engineering management experience and genuine enthusiasm for how AI-assisted development is changing the way software gets built.

What You'll Do:

• Lead and grow a team of software engineers contributing to Backblaze cloud services, spanning both customer-facing features and underlying infrastructure.

• Own the software development lifecycle for your team: planning, design, implementation, and post-launch support, partnering with QA and release teams for testing and delivery.

• Contribute to feature development and infrastructure improvements that expand Backblaze cloud service capabilities for developers, enterprises, and AI workloads.

• Ensure the reliability and maintainability of cloud service components through ongoing support, bug fixes, and technical debt management.

• Participate hands-on in code reviews, architecture decisions, and technical problem-solving alongside your team.

• Partner with Product Management to shape roadmap priorities and long-term strategy, bringing engineering perspective and data to influence decisions, and translate agreed priorities into well-scoped plans with clear milestones.

• Work closely with QA and release engineering teams to ensure smooth handoffs, clear acceptance criteria, and high-quality delivery.

• Champion the effective use of AI-assisted development tools; actively guide team members in adopting agentic coding practices and help establish team norms around AI-augmented workflows.

• Continuously improve team productivity: identify bottlenecks, refine processes, and invest in tooling, practices, and team habits that help engineers do their best work.

• Conduct regular 1:1s, deliver performance reviews, support career development, and lead hiring to grow and strengthen the team.

Tools and Technologies:

• Backend development: familiarity with server-side languages and frameworks used in cloud platform or API development

• Engineering toolchain: source control, CI/CD pipelines, project tracking, and artifact management

• AI coding tools: Claude Code, Cursor, or similar agentic development tools

The Right Fit:

• 3+ years of engineering management experience leading software development teams, ideally in a cloud infrastructure, SaaS, or platform engineering environment.

• Demonstrated experience managing distributed, remote engineering teams across time zones, including effective async communication, remote collaboration practices, and keeping remote team members engaged and aligned.

• Strong software engineering background with expertise in system architecture; able to engage hands-on in technical discussions, design reviews, and architectural decisions.

• Solid command of the full software development lifecycle, from requirements and design through testing, deployment, and production support.

• Track record of delivering features and platform improvements on time with high quality, balancing speed with engineering rigor.

• Experience working closely with Product Management to refine roadmaps and translate priorities into executable engineering plans.

• Effective communicator: able to represent your team’s work clearly to leadership and stakeholders, run engineering reviews, and escalate risks and trade-offs with appropriate context and recommended paths forward.

• Familiarity with AI agentic coding tools (Claude Code, Cursor, or similar) is a plus; we actively use them and value leaders who embrace and encourage their use.

• Experience with cloud storage platforms, distributed systems, or developer-facing APIs is a plus.

Why Backblaze:

• Lead a team building software used by hundreds of thousands of developers and businesses worldwide.

• Work at the intersection of cloud storage, developer tools, and AI-driven workflows.

• Collaborate with experienced engineering, product, and QA teams in a flat, low-bureaucracy environment.

• Competitive compensation and benefits.

• Remote-first culture supporting work-life…