Engineering Manager, Journeys

Job description

Attentive® is the AI marketing platform for 1:1 personalization redefining the way brands and people connect. We’re the only marketing platform that combines powerful technology with human expertise to build authentic customer relationships. By unifying SMS, RCS, email, and push notifications, our AI-powered personalization engine delivers bespoke experiences that drive performance, revenue, and loyalty through real-time behavioral insights. Recognized as the #1 provider in SMS Marketing by G2, Attentive partners with more than 8,000 customers across 70+ industries. Leading global brands like Crate and Barrel, Urban Outfitters, and Carter’s work with us to enable billions of interactions that power tens of billions in revenue for our customers. With a distributed global workforce and employee hubs in New York City, San Francisco, London, and Sydney, Attentive’s team has been consistently recognized for its performance and culture. We’re proud to be included in [Deloitte’s Fast 500](https://www.deloitte.com/content/dam/assets-zone3/us/en/docs/services/deloitte-private/2025/us-2024-technology-fast-500-rankings.pdf) (four years running!), [LinkedIn’s Top Startups](https://www.attentive.com/blog/attentive-ranked-8-on-linkedins-2020-top-startups-list-in-the-united-states), [Forbes’ Cloud 100](https://www.forbes.com/lists/cloud100/) (five years running!), [Inc.’s Best Workplaces](https://www.inc.com/best-workplaces/2025), and the [Human Rights Campaign Foundation's Corporate Equality Index](https://www.hrc.org/resources/corporate-equality-index)! **About the Role** Attentive is looking for an Engineering Manager to lead the Journeys team, which builds the product and systems that enable brands to create, publish, and run automated, event-driven customer communications across SMS, email, and push. You’ll lead engineers working across a visual journey-building experience and the distributed workflow platform behind it. You’ll balance product delivery with the operational rigor required for a customer-facing messaging system—improving reliability, observability, performance, and the ease with which customers and implementation teams can understand and troubleshoot their journeys. You’ll develop a high-performing team, guide technical and architectural decisions, and partner closely with Product, Messaging Platform, Content Tools, and other engineering teams. You’ll create clarity across complex initiatives and dependencies while keeping the team focused on scalable platform capabilities that improve customer outcomes. **What You’ll Accomplish** - Lead the Journeys team’s roadmap, delivery, and technical direction across the journey-building experience and workflow platform - Partner with Product, Design, implementation teams, and engineering peers to refine requirements, prioritize investment, negotiate tradeoffs, and resolve dependencies - Improve the reliability, observability, performance, and scale of customer-facing journey execution - Build a high-performing team through hiring, coaching, actionable feedback, and clear growth opportunities - Establish clear operating rhythms, delivery plans, and stakeholder communication; surface risks early and remove blockers - Balance immediate customer needs with durable, reusable product and platform capabilities **Your Expertise** - 2+ years of experience managing software engineers and 7+ years of professional software engineering experience - Strong technical foundation in distributed, event-driven systems, including workflow orchestration, APIs, data modeling, and scalable customer-facing applications - Experience guiding architecture and delivery across user-facing product experiences and high-volume backend systems, balancing customer impact, reliability, performance, and maintainability - Proven ability to partner with Product, Design, implementation teams, and engineering peers to refine requirements, prioritize work, negotiate tradeoffs, and deliver complex cross-functional initiatives - Experience leading reliable, operationally mature services, including incident response, on-call health, observability, and technical-debt reduction - A thoughtful people leader who hires, coaches, gives actionable feedback, manages performance, and builds an inclusive, high-accountability team culture - Clear, proactive communicator who manages delivery plans and stakeholder expectations, surfaces risks early, removes blockers, and uses modern—including AI-powered—engineering practices to improve team effectiveness #### What We Use - Java and Spring Boot microservices, built with Gradle - React, TypeScript, and GraphQL for the visual journey-building experience - PostgreSQL, DynamoDB, and S3 for data and workflow storage - Apache Pulsar and gRPC for distributed, event-driven communication - Kubernetes on AWS EKS, with Istio, Terraform, Helm, and Datadog - Temporal, feature flags, and workflow-orchestration tooling for reliable automation at scale You'll get competitive[perks and benefits](https://www.attentive.com/benefits), from health & wellness to equity, to help you bring your best self to work. **For US based applicants:** - The US base salary range for this full-time position is **$227,000 - $270,000** annually+ equity + benefits - Our salary ranges are determined by role, level and location #LI-EF1 **By applying for this position, your data will be processed as per [Attentive's Privacy Policy](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RViE_YUnu0ipiJQ9xDpC-iSJ9sYJBbX8/view?usp=sharing).** **Attentive Company Values** **Default to Action** - Move swiftly and with purpose **Be One Unstoppable Team** - Rally as each other’s champions **Champion the Customer** - Our success is defined by our customers' success **Act Like an Owner** - Take responsibility for Attentive’s success Learn more about [AWAKE](https://www.attentive.com/awake), Attentive’s collective of employee resource groups. If you do not meet all the requirements listed here, we still encourage you to apply! No job description is perfect, and we may also have another opportunity that closely matches your skills and experience. At Attentive, we know that our Company's strength lies in the diversity of our employees. Attentive is an Equal Opportunity Employer and we welcome applicants from all backgrounds. Our policy is to provide equal employment opportunities for all employees, applicants and covered individuals regardless of protected characteristics. We prioritize and maintain a fair, inclusive and equitable workplace free from discrimination, harassment, and retaliation. Attentive is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities. If you need any assistance or reasonable accommodations, please let your recruiter know.