Engineering Manager, Federated API Gateway

Job Description

Netflix is reinventing how the world watches television, with over 193 million members in 190 countries enjoying award-winning TV series, documentaries, and feature films across a wide variety of genres and languages. Members enjoy a personalized experience, discovering stories they'll love, and watching those on nearly every device imaginable.
Our culture is unique, and we live by our values. It is a crucial part of our approach to innovation, and so the ability to adapt and embrace Netflix culture will be critical. A successful manager leads by exemplifying our culture while also seeking out opportunities to expand it.

This role is location independent but would prefer working hours that are reasonably close to the team's current Pacific Time zone.

About the Federated API Gateway team

We develop a scalable API platform that accommodates rapid iteration across mid-tier and backend teams while providing a unified, discoverable API to clients. The current scope includes the GraphQL gateway, GraphQL schema registry, and federation ''graph-layer'' SDK.
Our current focus areas are Studio Edge, the unified GraphQL API for our content/studio applications, and Consumer Edge, a pioneering project to unify our MemberUIs (TVUI, Web, iOS, and Android) on a unified GraphQL API. Additionally, our team is a pivotal contributor to advancing GraphQL adoption across Netflix.

More details are in the team FAQ.

In this role, you will
• Lead a team of capable senior software engineers to deliver high impact results. The following qualities and behaviors will help you thrive in the role:
• Effective project management; ability to execute locally and cross-functionally.
• Effective communicator; can articulate complex ideas and influence decisions.
• Committed to high quality and high-value results, negotiates what's best for Netflix.
• Prioritizes psychological safety; the team achieves a healthy level of engagement.
• Ability to foster individual growth and to boost collective performance.
• Credible technical advisor to the team, experience building and operating distributed systems.
• Strategic thinking; can build a coherent vision for the future.

You have experience with
• People leadership of a software engineering team
• Cross-functional work with teams of different expertise
• Modern development practices in Cloud-based software
• APIs backed by microservices
• The nuances of software development prioritization and making tradeoffs
• Leading projects spanning multiple cross-functional teams to successful completion

Learn and grow in these areas
• Federated GraphQL API architecture across hundreds of services
• Techniques to scale-out API Gateway architecture across multiple Netflix domains (Studio, Consumer, Infra, Data)
• Large scale, high volume distributed systems
• Leading large complex projects across many disparate, independent engineering teams through influence and joy of adoption
• Delivering and receiving candid feedback in a variety of situations
• Balancing between giving context vs. driving direction and when to push or pull back your influence
• Growing senior engineers deep into their careers and increasing their impact at Netflix
• Understand your team needs and potentially growing it through thoughtful, additive hiring

Things that show how we think
• Hiring Manager's leadership philosophy
• What makes a great engineering manager
• Creating Margin
• Full Cycle Developers
• Team members on a panel at Apollo's GraphQL summit
• How Netflix Scales its API with GraphQL Federation