Engineering Manager, Online Data Stores

About Persona

Persona is the configurable identity platform built for businesses in a digital-first world. Verifying individuals and organizations is harder — but more important — than ever, with AI enabling fraudsters to launch sophisticated accounts at scale and regulations evolving rapidly.

We’ve built Persona to support practically every use case and industry — that’s why we’re able to serve a wide range of leading companies. For example, Instacart relies on Persona to verify shoppers who onboard onto their platform before delivering groceries to your doorstep. Meanwhile, OpenAI relies on Persona to keep bad actors out, protecting one of the world’s most powerful AI platforms from large-scale abuse in a time when AI is reshaping the way we work and live.

We believe that making the internet safer and more human requires a team that reflects the diverse, global nature of the people we aim to serve. We’re growing rapidly and looking for exceptional people to join us.

About the Role

We are looking for an experienced Engineering Manager to lead our Online Data Stores team. This team is responsible for building, maintaining, and shaping the future of the online data stores that power our application stack. As an Engineering Manager, you will provide technical leadership, drive architectural decisions, and ensure the scalability, reliability, and performance of our core data storage systems. You will work closely with engineering teams across the company to define best practices and evolve our data storage infrastructure to support Persona’s rapid growth.

Engineering management at Persona is truly "hands-on"—managers are encouraged to contribute directly to their team's project goals, a trait passed down from our highly technical founders. We believe that leadership through direct technical contribution fosters a deeper connection between management and engineering, helping drive impactful results.

• Lead and grow the Online Data Stores engineering team, providing mentorship, guidance, and career development.
• Own the vision, strategy, and roadmap for our online data storage solutions, ensuring they align with business objectives, Engineering organization goals and long-term scalability needs.
• Oversee the design, implementation, and maintenance of high-performance, scalable, and secure data stores used across our application stack.
• Collaborate with infrastructure, platform, and application teams to optimize data storage solutions for performance, reliability, and cost-efficiency.
• Establish best practices for data modeling, access patterns, monitoring, and incident response.
• Ensure operational excellence by driving automation, observability, and proactive capacity planning.
• Partner with recruiting to attract and retain top-tier engineering talent.

• 5+ years of software engineering experience with a focus on large-scale, distributed data systems.
• 2+ years of engineering management experience, with a proven track record of building and leading high-performing teams.
• Strong technical expertise in designing and operating scalable data storage solutions, such as relational databases .(PostgreSQL, MySQL), NoSQL stores (MongoDB, Cassandra, ElasticSearch), and caching systems (Redis, Memcached).
• Experience with cloud-native architectures and technologies, particularly Google Cloud (or equivalent cloud providers).
• Deep understanding of data consistency, replication, partitioning, and high availability strategies.
• Familiarity with at least one ORM technology and preference with some experience in Ruby on Rails.
• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to navigate ambiguity in a fast-paced environment.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with a focus on cross-functional teamwork.

• Experience working in a remote-first team environment.
• Experience with graph-based database technologies such as TigerGraph or Neo4j.
• Familiarity with stream processing frameworks such as Apache Kafka or Flink.
• Exposure to Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools like Terraform or Pulumi.
• Understanding of data security best practices and compliance frameworks such as SOC 2, GDPR, and HIPAA.
• Prior experience contributing to open-source database or infrastructure projects.

Compensation & Equity

This salary range is the estimated base salary range. Base salaries are just one component of the total compensation package and are determined by a number of factors such as years of experience, expertise, qualifications and more. In addition to base salary, we offer competitive equity packages that play a big part in recognizing you for the huge impact you will have on helping us achieve our mission. Please note, the salary range is a guideline that is subject to change without notice.

Benefits and Perks

Persona offers a wide range of thoughtful and inclusive benefits for this role, including medical, dental, and vision, 3% 401(k) contribution, unlimited PTO, quarterly mental health days, family planning benefits, professional development stipends, wellness benefits, unlimited paid time off, among others. While we believe competitive compensation and benefits are a critical aspect of you deciding to join us, we do hope you consider why our core values and culture are right for you. If you’d like to better understand what it’s like working at Persona, feel free to check out our reviews on Glassdoor.

Diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging

At Persona, we strive to put diversity and inclusion at the forefront of everything we do, reflecting our core values. Our DEIB Employee Resource Group seeks to build a diverse and inclusive team that fosters an environment where each Personerd feels empowered to bring their unique differences to work and achieve their full innovative potential. Our hope is that by fostering such an environment, we strengthen our business and relationships by putting people first.

We strive to promote a culture that celebrates diversity and inclusiveness regardless of, but not limited to, race, gender, sexual orientation, family status, religion, ethnicity, national origin, physical disability, veteran status, or age.