Software Engineering Manager

Job Description

Software Engineering Manager / Product Owner – Object Storage

Location: Denver, CO |Schedule: Full-Time · Hybrid (Tue–Thu)

Our client is an established leader in enterprise data storage, with a long track record of innovation across the data lifecycle. Their platform orchestrates, protects and enriches data at scale for organisations in hyperscale cloud, media & entertainment, government, life sciences, financial services, education and enterprise IT. This search is being run confidentially on their behalf; the hiring company’s name is shared with candidates ahead of interview.

Our client is building a new object storage engineering team in the Denver area, and is looking for a Software Engineering Manager / Product Owner to lead it from day one. You’ll hire and grow the team, own its backlog and priorities, and work closely with Product Management, the team’s technical lead, and the company’s established object storage engineering teams in Europe.

The team works on the I/O pipeline at the heart of an exabyte-scale object storage platform — including S3 request handling, data placement, durability, and the systems that move data across storage tiers.

Key Responsibilities – Engineering Management & Delivery

• Lead and line-manage the new object storage engineering team, including hiring, one-on-ones, performance management, career development and team development.
• Be accountable for team execution and delivery, ensuring priorities are understood and work is planned and completed effectively.
• Build and grow the team, develop technical ownership within it, and mentor engineers across experience levels.
• Establish strong engineering, design-review, code-review, quality and delivery practices.
• Work closely with the technical lead and senior engineers on technical direction, architecture, risks and dependencies.

Product Ownership & Planning

• Own and prioritise the team’s backlog based on product priorities, technical needs, customer requirements and engineering dependencies.
• Define sprint goals and ensure the team has clear, actionable priorities and acceptance criteria.
• Partner closely with Product Management on roadmap planning, scope, sequencing and trade-offs.
• Translate roadmap priorities into engineering work and balance feature development with technical debt, quality, performance, maintainability and reliability.
• Communicate progress, risks, dependencies and trade-offs to Product Management and the broader organisation.

Technical Context

• Lead a team working across the object storage I/O pipeline, including S3 request handling, data placement, durability and movement of data across NVMe, HDD and tape.
• Maintain sufficient technical depth to participate in design discussions, challenge assumptions and help the team make sound engineering decisions.
• Support the team’s work across S3 and data-mover functionality and collaborate with engineers who have deeper domain expertise where appropriate.

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including experience with systems, distributed systems, storage software, or a comparable technical domain.
• 2+ years of engineering management or technical leadership experience, including coaching and developing engineers.
• Experience owning or driving an engineering backlog and working with Product Management on roadmap priorities and trade-offs.
• Strong understanding of software engineering delivery, architecture, quality and lifecycle practices.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to work effectively across engineering, Product Management and remote/distributed teams.
• Comfortable leading through ambiguity, making trade-offs and driving decisions across technical, product and delivery priorities.
• This is a hybrid role, with in-office work in the Denver, CO area Tuesday through Thursday. We welcome serious relocators to apply.

Preferred / Nice-to-Have

• Previous experience as a Product Owner or in a similar engineering planning role.
• Ability to stay hands-on as a player-coach, contributing to design, code reviews or critical implementation work alongside the team.
• Experience with distributed storage, object storage, or the Amazon S3 API.
• Linux systems experience and familiarity with performance-sensitive software.
• Experience with storage media such as HDD, SSD, NVMe and tape.
• Familiarity with Agile / Scrum product development.

Benefits & Compensation

A comprehensive benefits package: medical, dental and vision coverage; Health Savings and Flexible Spending Accounts; company-paid life, AD&D and disability insurance; a company-matched 401(k) retirement plan; and an Employee Stock Purchase Program.

Anticipated Salary Range: $160,000 to $200,000 for qualified applicants.

The above range is a good-faith estimate of possible compensation at the time of posting; pay within the range depends on relevant experience, knowledge/education, skills/abilities, internal equity and budget.