Engineering Manager (Product Engineering)

About Kustomer

Kustomer is the industry leading conversational CRM platform perfecting every customer experience.  Built with intelligent tools such as AI and Automation, no code-configuration and a connected data platform that unifies data from multiple sources through a single timeline, Kustomer empowers businesses to operate with greater efficiency and deliver more personalized service to customers across any channel, making every interaction more meaningful and memorable. Today, Kustomer is the core platform for leading brands like Abercrombie, Nuts.com, Skims, Turo, Priceline and Sweetgreen.

Kustomer was founded in 2015 by serial entrepreneurs Brad Birnbaum and Jeremy Suriel and has raised over $200M in funding backed by leading VCs. Meta announced its intention to acquire Kustomer in 2020 and completed the transaction in 2022. Kustomer joined Meta’s Business Messaging Group to transform the way people and businesses communicate through modern messaging channels.  In 2023, Kustomer spun out from Meta as a standalone company backed by original partners, Battery, Redpoint and Boldstart Ventures, who have invested $60M in capital, ensuring Kustomer’s growth and success for many years to come. 

Our Krew is made up of passionate and collaborative people who really care about what they do and the people they help. We look for people who are dedicated to enhancing the customer service experience for everyone involved, as it's the core of what we do. We're growing our business with no plans of slowing down. We actively seek individuals who want to learn and be challenged every day. Kustomer has a strong NYC presence and is also a remote friendly company, with Krew members located throughout the US and United Kingdom. We believe in togetherness to help foster strong relationships, collaboration and communication, and our Krew  gets together for both KKO and Kamp Kustomer  each year.

About the Role

We’re looking for an exceptional Engineering Manager to lead our End User Experience team.  This team is responsible for building and maintaining our Chat functionality, Messaging Channels, Integrations, and AI Agents for Customers, powering how end users interact with the product.  In this dual role, you’ll serve as both a hands-on technical lead and an empathetic people manager. You’ll guide a talented group of engineers from diverse backgrounds, helping them grow while driving team performance and fostering a culture of technical mentorship. You’ll play a key role in designing and building robust backend systems that enhance our platform and automation capabilities. Your leadership will shape our technical vision and execution, in close collaboration with Product and other stakeholders. From driving engineering best practices to improving code quality and scaling our systems, your impact will be felt across the organization. If you're passionate about engineering, excited to lead by example, and ready to inspire a high-performing team, we’d love to meet you.

Key Responsibilities

• Manage a team of software engineers with diverse experience (30%)

  • Manage employees performance by holding regular 1-1’s, conducting performance reviews, setting objectives for each team member, and overseeing team’s work

  • Provide leadership and coaching to develop your team members

  • Provide technical mentorship and guidance to the team and top management, as well as provide input into cross-team projects and initiatives

  • Support established organizational objectives by developing goals and strategies.

  • Report on goals and represent the teams to senior leadership

  • Participate in hiring and recruiting initiatives

• Analyze, design, and develop software to improve the company's platform and expand its automation capabilities. (30%)

  • Design and develop software that expands and evolves our core product, going beyond platform or automation work to drive meaningful customer-facing improvements

  • Lead technical design and execution across projects, serving as a hands-on tech lead while collaborating with cross-functional stakeholders

  • Build and extend existing features while prototyping and launching new capabilities with an emphasis on speed, quality, and innovation

  • Identify and implement opportunities to integrate AI into current and net-new product experiences, working closely with Product and Design

  • Bring a product-focused mindset to backend and frontend engineering, ensuring solutions are reliable, scalable, and impactful

  • Contribute to long-term technical planning, architectural decisions, and team-level execution strategies

• Participate in sprint planning, and partner with Product to ensure the team is delivering quality technical output. (20%)

  • Lead the team in translating business requirements and R&D initiatives into technical requirements, including selection of appropriate technologies

• Participate in cross-team initiatives to drive engineering best-practices (20%)

  • Conduct code and architecture reviews across the platform

  • Monitor and contribute to improving code quality and decreasing time to deliver code, by staying involved in initiatives around on-call rotations, application performance monitoring, test automation, development environments, and/or continuous delivery pipelines

  • Maintain good relationships with internal and external stakeholders

  • Engage in client calls when necessary to provide technical insight and roadmap

Your qualifications:

• You have a bachelor's degree (or equivalent experience) in Computer Science or related field 

• You have 7+ years of progressive experience in software engineering

• You have at least 1+ year of experience managing a team of engineers

• You have experience growing, mentoring, and developing engineers with varying degrees of experience

• You are up-to-date with, and have a passion for, software engineering best practices

• You have experience attracting and hiring engineering talent

• Technical experience:

  • You’re familiar with Golang, Node.js and/or React.js

  • You’ve worked with and built REST APIs

  • Experience with continuous deployment

  • Experience with Docker, Terraform, and/or AWS

  • Experience with Elasticsearch, Solr, or Algolia

  • Experience with automated testing practices

HIPAA Compliance

All roles at Kustomer may involve handling sensitive personal data.

Benefits

Kustomer offers an array of benefits including competitive salaries and stock options. In the U.S. we offer 100% healthcare coverage, 401K, WiFi and Mobile reimbursement, and a generous vacation policy; in the UK we also offer pension, supplemental health insurance and other perks.

Diversity & Inclusion at Kustomer

Kustomer is committed to bringing together individuals from different backgrounds and perspectives.

We strive to create an inclusive environment where everyone can thrive, feel a sense of belonging, and do great work together.We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer open to all qualified applicants regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or expression, Veteran status, or any other legally protected status.

Disclaimer: Kustomer only contacts candidates from company email addresses ending in kustomer.com and does not seek funds from candidates in any circumstances.