Engineering Manager, Consumer Platform & Applications

The Associated Press is an independent global news organization dedicated to factual reporting. Founded in 1846, AP today remains the most trusted source of fast, accurate, unbiased news in all formats and the essential provider of the technology and services vital to the news business. More than half the world's population sees AP journalism every day.

Why this role matters

We are looking for an experienced Engineering Manager to lead the development and delivery of AP's consumer-facing products.

This is a technically hands-on leadership role in a fast-growing direct-to-consumer environment. You will lead a distributed team of engineers, working alongside vendor partners, and own AP's consumer platform end to end. That means the CMS and backend services our newsroom depends on, and the web and mobile applications our readers open every morning.

You will partner closely with Product, Design, Editorial, and QA to bring new experiences to market. And you will have the opportunity to shape how millions of people experience AP journalism, all across the world.

What you will do

• Manage and mentor a distributed team of engineers, including vendor partners across multiple time zones.

• Stay hands-on where it counts: code review, architectural decision records, prototyping, and unblocking your team on complex implementation challenges.

• Bring AI-assisted development and agentic workflows into how the team works, and set sensible norms for their use in delivery and review.

• Lead development of headless web applications using React / Next.js and native iOS and Android apps serving millions of users daily.

• Extend the AP News CMS and backend services that power editorial workflows, publishing, and consumer products.

• Own GraphQL API and data contracts, ensuring backward-compatible change across clients that ship on different cadences.

• Drive performance across the stack, from Core Web Vitals on the client to latency and caching on the backend.

• Coordinate web and app releases, and partner with AP's Operations Command Center on incident response and root cause analysis.

• Partner with Product, Design, Editorial, QA, Security, and Revenue to turn roadmap initiatives into executable plans.

• Keep the team focused on outcomes, making decisions quickly and steering effort toward the work that matters most.

• Coach engineers through 1:1s, career conversations, and pairing, growing ownership and raising the technical bar across the team.

Who you are

• 6+ years building and operating consumer-facing web and mobile applications and the backend systems behind them, including time in a technical leadership or engineering management role.

• Experience as a player-coach, staying technically close enough to review, prototype, and unblock while leading a team and owning delivery.

• A product-minded approach to engineering, with system design judgment that balances speed, scalability, and maintainability.

• Hands-on experience with AI development tools, and a considered view of where agentic workflows help a team most.

• Strong in TypeScript and React with a modern meta-framework (Next.js or equivalent), plus depth in at least one modern server-side language (TypeScript/Node, Go, Python, Java, or Kotlin). Working familiarity with native iOS and Android release processes.

• Experienced designing and evolving GraphQL APIs across multiple client surfaces.

• Fluent in headless and structured content modeling, and in how editorial workflows and publishing states map to content types and downstream APIs.

• Deep experience with modern CI/CD: automated pipelines, feature flags and staged rollouts, quality gates that catch problems before release, and dependable rollback.

• Experience optimizing performance and diagnosing production issues in high-traffic, ad-supported environments, supported by good observability practice .

• Experience managing distributed teams and external vendors across time zones.

• Working knowledge of accessibility (WCAG 2.1 AA), web security and privacy fundamentals, SEO, and analytics.

• Bachelor's or Master's in computer science or a related field (or equivalent experience).

This role spans application and platform engineering, and we know few candidates are equally deep in both. If you are strong in one and credible in the other, we would like to hear from you.

What will set you apart: 

• Experience with an enterprise CMS, particularly Brightspot .

• Familiarity with monetization systems (advertising and/or consumer pay) and first-party identity and data concepts.

• Experience coaching engineers through IC-to-tech-lead or mid-to-senior transitions.

• Experience working in pod or squad models with end-to-end ownership.

• Experience building and maintaining a shared component library or design system, with tooling such as Storybook.

• Experience integrating multimedia content, video platforms, and engagement features.

• Background in news, publishing, or another editorial environment.

Work Location

New York (hybrid) or remote (US) 

Salary & Benefits

The anticipated salary range for this position is $154,000 to $180,000 , based on a candidate's skills, qualifications and location. The Associated Press offers comprehensive benefits, which include:

• Competitive medical, dental and vision coverage

• Retirement benefits

• Company paid life insurance

• Paid vacation and sick days

• Paid parental leave for any new parent

• Mental well-being resources

AP seeks to build an inclusive organization grounded in respect for differences. We support all aspects of diversity and provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, marital status, national origin, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, status as a veteran, or other characteristic protected by law.