Job description
Engineering Manager – AI / Backend Platform (Top 10%)
Company Overview
A leading global technology organisation is hiring an Engineering Manager to join its AI Foundation Services team, building the backend systems and platforms that power AI-driven products at scale. This is a high-bar role - they are specifically looking for someone in the top 10% of Engineering Managers.
Job Summary
This position combines strong people leadership with deep technical credibility.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead ~10 engineers across 2 teams
- Operate at ~70% leadership / 30% technical involvement
- Drive clear, structured decision-making across engineering teams
- Stay close enough to the tech to debug issues, challenge architecture, and guide solutions
Requirements / Qualifications
- Exceptional communicator (critical)
- Able to break down complex problems quickly and clearly
- Leads discussions with structure, clarity, and confidence
- Builds alignment across engineering, product, and leadership
- Strong backend / systems engineer at heart
- Background in backend, platform, or infrastructure engineering
- Deep understanding of microservices and distributed systems
- Comfortable identifying issues such as:
- performance bottlenecks / latency
- architectural gaps
- production incidents
- Able to guide engineers on where to look, how to fix, and who to involve
- AI / ML exposure
- Experience working with or alongside AI / ML / LLM-based systems
- Applied experience is sufficient (not purely theoretical)
- Proven people leadership
- Experience managing engineers and supporting:
- performance and growth
- career development
- team scaling and hiring
- Technical credibility over specific stack
- Python is a plus, but not essential
- Strong engineers who have worked across multiple technologies are preferred
Location
Germany, Remote: True
Employment Type
Full Time
Salary & Benefits
- Work on core AI infrastructure and backend systems
- High ownership across people, architecture, and delivery
- Strong engineering culture with a focus on clarity, autonomy, and impact
- Remote-first environment with flexibility
