confluent - Senior Engineering Manager - Experience Foundations

• Technical Leadership & Engineering Excellence • Establish clear, reusable patterns and best practices for UI engineers developing security and networking code • Elevate the impact of all UI engineers across multiple product teams (Governance, Flink, Kafka, Connect, Tableflow) • Take a depth-first, hands-on approach to understanding systems and unblocking teams • Go deep in domain areas—understand the technical intricacies of networking protocols, security models, and billing systems to make sound architectural decisions • Drive the evolution of Experience Foundations infrastructure from UI-only to supporting the entire Experience organization, partner with the existing Engineering Manager to shape and execute the foundations roadmap • Cross-Functional Partnership • Own PM and Design partnerships for Security, Networking, and Billing domains • Ensure smooth execution and delivery of product initiatives across these verticals • Bridge technical and product perspectives to drive aligned outcomes • Translate domain complexity into clear execution plans • Challenge product specs when necessary to ensure technical feasibility • Partner with product teams across the portfolio to ensure patterns meet their needs • Communicate progress, risks, and trade-offs transparently to senior leadership • Team & People Management • Collaborate with existing engineering leadership to build cohesive team strategy, including existing manager in the foundations space as your direct report • Mentor and develop engineers across multiple disciplines and experience levels • Foster a culture of ownership, excellence, and continuous improvement • Create leverage by empowering engineers with patterns, tools, and knowledge • Build strong connections between Experience Foundations and application teams • Champion developer productivity through AI tooling adoption, test automation, and improved engineering processes • Your work will enable UX engineers across our entire application portfolio to build consistent, high-quality security and networking experiences. By establishing clear patterns and evolving our foundations infrastructure, you'll multiply the impact of every engineer working on Governance, Flink, Kafka, Connect, Tableflow, and future products—while supporting the foundational pillars that drive over 70% of Confluent's revenue. • If you're energized by the challenge of transforming foundations infrastructure while elevating engineering capabilities across critical product domains, we'd love to talk. • 8+ years of software engineering experience with 4+ years in engineering management • Strong hands-on technical background with ability to dive deep into complex systems • Deep frontend engineering expertise: Strong understanding of modern web development (React, TypeScript, component design systems) • Proven ability to distill complex technical domains into clear patterns and best practices • Experience creating reusable patterns/frameworks adopted across multiple teams or products • Track record of elevating team capabilities through mentorship and knowledge sharing • Demonstrated success partnering with Product and Design to drive execution • Experience managing or collaborating closely with other engineering managers • Strong communication skills and ability to influence across organizational boundaries • Experience managing multiple product areas or technical domains simultaneously • WHAT GIVES YOU AN EDGE: • Experience managing managers or leading leaders • Domain knowledge in at least one TEAR area: Security (RBAC, SSO, BYOK, encryption), Networking (VPC, PrivateLink, routing), or Billing/Payments (subscription models, usage tracking) • Experience evolving platform teams to serve broader organizational needs • Proficient with or highly curious about AI-assisted development tools (Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, etc.) • Track record of driving developer productivity improvements through tooling, automation, or process innovation • READY TO BUILD WHAT'S NEXT? LET’S GET IN MOTION. • COME AS YOU ARE • Belonging isn’t a perk here. It’s the baseline. We work across time zones and backgrounds, knowing the best ideas come from different perspectives. And we make space for everyone to lead, grow, and challenge what’s possible.