Manager, Software Engineering

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 balance.

To provide greater transparency to candidates, we share base pay ranges for all US-based job postings regardless of state. We set standard base pay ranges for all roles based on function, level, and country location, benchmarked against similar-stage growth companies. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors, including candidate location, skills, depth of work experience, and relevant licenses/credentials, and may vary from the amounts listed below.

The expected salary range for this role is $170,000 - $200,000.

At Backblaze, we value being fair and good to our customers, partners, and employees. That's why diversity, equity, and inclusion are at the core of our values. We are committed to fostering a workforce where all employees feel a sense of belonging regardless of race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion, socio-economic status, ability, veteran status, and education. We believe that our dedication to cultivating a diverse workspace not only allows us to better serve our customers in over 175 countries but further reinforces our commitment to doing the right thing. We are proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer.

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