Engineering Manager (Developer Platform)

🗂️ Role Overview

Sendcloud is looking for an Engineering Manager, Developer Platform, within Platform Engineering, reporting to the Head of Platform Engineering.

Platform Engineering sits at the foundation of Sendcloud’s e-commerce shipping platform. Its mission is to make reliability, security, and cost efficiency core capabilities, and to give every product team the tools they need to move fast without breaking things. The Developer Platform team is the engine behind that: CI/CD, GitOps, internal developer tooling, observability, and engineering standards that actually get adopted.

🛠️ The Team

The Developer Platform team operates as an advisory and enablement function: it proposes and enforces engineering standards, builds the tooling that makes those standards achievable, measures whether adoption is happening, and escalates when it isn’t. This is not a team that builds tools and hopes people use them — it proactively pushes operational excellence across the engineering organisation through data, collaboration, and structured engagement with product teams.

The team owns:

• CI/CD pipelines and GitLab CI templates
• Argo CD and progressive delivery tooling
• Internal Developer Platform (self-service provisioning, environment management, service scaffolding)
• Developer tooling (Renovate, Helm charts, application templates)
• Developer experience and onboarding
• Observability for engineers (Datadog APM, service catalogue)
• Engineering standards and DORA metrics tracking
• Incident tooling (Incident.io, Sentry)

🧐 The Role

As Engineering Manager for the Developer Platform, you lead a team whose success is measured by how much better every other engineer at Sendcloud is able to work. Reporting to the Head of Platform Engineering, you act as both people manager and de facto product owner of the Developer Platform — setting priorities, gathering feedback from internal users, and making sure the work is connected to outcomes, not just outputs. You’ll be coached and supported by the Head of Platform Engineering and work alongside a peer EM running the Foundation Platform team.

🎯 What you’ll do

Lead and Grow Your Team

• Run meaningful 1:1s focused on growth and career development, not status updates
• Create and regularly review Individual Development Plans for every direct report
• Build genuine psychological safety: a team where people raise problems early and learn from mistakes
• Spot performance concerns early and address them with clarity and care
• Identify and advocate for promotions when earned; retain people worth keeping
• Hire well — take an active role in interviews and set a high bar for technical and cultural fit

Own Delivery

• Run iteration planning, manage scope, track commitments, and remove blockers before they become fires
• Deliver predictably in 6-week planning cycles, and use data to keep improving
• Ensure operational maturity: runbooks, SLOs, on-call practices, and blameless post-mortems are part of how the team works
• Coordinate dependencies with the Foundation Platform team and Product Engineering — proactively, not reactively

Shape the Developer Platform Roadmap

• Act as the de facto product owner: prioritise based on developer impact, gather feedback, and close the loop
• Partner with Staff Engineers on the technical direction of CI/CD, the IDP, and developer tooling
• Champion “Platform as a Product” — the team builds things internal engineers want to use, not things they have to use
• Make the roadmap visible and understood across the Platform domain and product engineering

Be a Trusted Cross-Functional Partner

• Build strong relationships with Platform and Engineering Management, Staff Engineers, Product Managers, and Product Leads
• Communicate clearly — surface trade-offs, share context, and help stakeholders understand what the team is doing and why
• Ensure product teams know how to adopt platform tooling and feel heard when they give feedback

📅 What Good Looks Like — Your First Six Months

Day 30

You know your team, peers, and key stakeholders. You understand the current reactive load challenge, the 2026 roadmap priorities, and where the team sits against its success metrics.

Day 60

You own delivery day-to-day. Planning, retros, and unblocking are yours. You’ve identified quick wins and at least one process that needed changing.

Day 90

You’ve completed first performance evaluations, created or refreshed all Individual Development Plans, and produced a 3–6 month team evolution plan. You’re a trusted voice in Platform domain discussions.

Day 180

Your team delivers predictably. Developer satisfaction is measurable and trending up. You’re seen as a reliable partner by product engineering, and actively working on your own growth as a leader.

✅ What you bring to the table

Personally

• You lead with clarity and invest deeply in your people — you understand that great management is a craft
• You have a genuine growth mindset: you seek feedback, reflect on your impact, and want to become a better leader over time
• You communicate clearly and adapt your message for engineers, peers, and senior stakeholders without losing substance

Professionally

• 3+ years of infrastructure, platform, or software engineering experience — enough depth to earn your team’s technical trust and shape good decisions
• 1–3 years leading a team as an engineering manager, team lead, or equivalent — with real experience running 1:1s, managing delivery, and owning team health
• Familiarity with CI/CD, DevOps practices, or developer tooling — deep expertise isn’t required, but curiosity and the ability to learn fast are non-negotiable
• Agile fluency — you run ceremonies that serve the team, not ceremonies that serve the process

Nice to Have

• Experience in a SaaS scale-up or fast-growth engineering organisation
• Hands-on exposure to GitLab CI, Argo CD, Terraform, or similar tools
• Background managing multi-discipline teams (backend, DevOps, tooling, QA)
• Familiarity with DORA metrics or the SPACE framework for measuring developer productivity

❤️ Our Values

💩 No bullshit: Big egos suck. Be open, honest, and transparent. Share your mistakes openly and learn from them. Don’t just talk about problems — solve them.

🎯 Grow & Win: Be highly curious, adaptable, and proactive. Embrace discomfort and change. Keep an open mindset and learn from others. You invest in our growth, so we invest in yours.

🎠 Have fun: Work hard, laugh harder. Not everything has to be serious. Be yourself, especially if you’re the good kind of crazy. Sendcloud is an adventure, not a corporate maze — enjoy the ride.

🎉 Benefits

• 🧠 Brain Benefits: €2,000 learning budget · Courses, certifications & conferences · Growth in an international team
• 🌴 Time Benefits: 28 days paid vacation/year · Extra day off on your birthday · Swap public holidays for meaningful ones
• ✈️ Sabbatical Benefits: 4 weeks fully paid every 3 years
• 🏡 Home Benefits: Flexible hybrid model (min. 1 day/week in office) · €500 home office budget
• 💪 Body Benefits: Company gym · Weekly bootcamp sessions · Online yoga · Free lunch every Monday · Fresh fruit · Barista coffee
• 🚌 Travel Benefits: Monthly commuting allowance
• 🪑 Future Benefits: Pension scheme · Discount on health insurance · Employee discount programs
• 🐾 Vibe Benefits: Dog-friendly office · After-hours drinks at the Sendcloud Bar