Engineering Manager

Location: Santa Clara, CA (5 days/week in office) Comp: ~$250K–$300K base + equity

Who We Are

Building the Backbone of Distributed Applications.

At Orkes, we are reimagining how developers build reliable, scalable, event-driven applications without wrangling complex infrastructure.

Born from Netflix's battle-tested open-source project, OSS Conductor, our platform is now powering billions of mission critical workflows across fintech, e-commerce, logistics, healthcare, and more.

Our platform powers billions of mission critical workflows across industries like fintech, e-commerce, logistics, and healthcare helping companies run the core operations of their business with confidence. These are the workflows behind every transaction, every delivery, every patient check-in, quietly orchestrating our digital world.

We’re solving some of the hardest infrastructure problems: how do you make distributed systems reliable, observable, and scalable – without every team having to reinvent the wheel? We absorb the complexity of distributed systems, letting teams build with confidence.

We’re hiring a strong engineering leader to own the Cloud & Platform engineering function at Orkes.

This is a high-impact, highly operational role; you’ll lead engineers while staying deeply hands-on in architecture, systems, and production challenges. The primary goal is to drive velocity of engineers on the team.

We are open to:

• A hands-on Tech Lead ready to step into management

• OR a Manager who still codes and operates at a high technical level

What You’ll Own

• Cloud & Platform Engineering

• • Lead systems responsible for cloud infrastructure, deployments, and platform capabilities

• • Support customer environments and production systems at scale

• • Drive improvements in reliability, performance, and scalability

• Team Leadership (Player-Coach)

• • Lead and mentor engineers while contributing technically

• • Review architecture, code, and system design

• • Potential to grow and manage a larger team over time

• Execution in a Startup Environment

• • Handle frequent context switching across priorities

• • Support high-profile customers and urgent production needs

• • Drive velocity while maintaining engineering quality

What We’re Looking For

• • Strong background in distributed systems / cloud infrastructure

• • Proven experience as a hands-on engineer (recently)

• • Experience leading engineers (formal or informal)

• • Ability to operate in high-context-switch, fast-moving environments

• • Startup experience or large-company experience with understanding of scale

• What Won’t Work

• • Managers who have been out of hands-on engineering for too long

• • Pure people managers without deep technical credibility

• • Engineers who struggle with fast pace or shifting priorities

• Ideal Profile

• • Former senior/staff engineer stepping into leadership

• • OR current EM who still codes and leads technically

• • Someone who has seen both startup and structured scale