Platform Engineering Manager, Cedar

• You have experience leading engineering teams that build developer platforms, testing infrastructure, CI/CD systems, internal tools, or reliability-focused systems
• You are a hands-on engineering manager who can go deep with engineers, understand technical tradeoffs, and help teams make practical decisions
• You have strong opinions about software quality, testing strategy, and how teams should validate complex systems at scale
• Collaborate with platform engineering leadership and stakeholders and can work directly with them to understand problems, define priorities, and drive alignment
• You are pragmatic and outcome-oriented. You know when to build, when to simplify, when to downscope, and when a process or technical solution is not worth the cost
• You are excited about the future of software development in an LLM-driven world and have a point of view on how testing, review, and validation need to evolve
• You are collaborative, curious, and respectful. You listen first, ask good questions, and build trust before driving change
• You are not a pure process manager. You want to understand the details, diagnose problems, and help the team produce better technical outcomes
• You have a track record of identifying problems, proposing solutions, and driving meaningful improvements across a team or organization
• You enjoy teaching, coaching, and helping engineers adopt better practices
• 5+ years of software engineering experience, with meaningful exposure to testing, developer experience, infrastructure, CI/CD, or platform engineering
• 2+ years of engineering management or technical leadership experience
• Experience building or operating systems that support software delivery, such as CI pipelines, test infrastructure, release tooling, internal platforms, or developer productivity systems
• Strong technical judgment and the ability to evaluate tradeoffs across reliability, cost, developer experience, and delivery speed
• Experience working with cross-functional stakeholders and translating ambiguous needs into concrete plans
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to write strategy documents, project proposals, and clear technical guidance
• Experience developing engineers through coaching, feedback, delegation, and career development
• A bias toward action and ownership in complex, evolving environments

Desirable

• We are looking for an Engineering Manager to lead Cedar’s Platform Testing team. This team owns the systems, strategy, and developer experience that help Cedar ship high-quality software quickly and confidently
• In this role, you will lead the transformation of Cedar’s testing ecosystem from a source of friction into a force multiplier for product stability and developer velocity
• You will define and execute a strategy that helps engineers get faster, more meaningful feedback; reduces the cost and complexity of validation; and ensures our tests are clearly aligned to product capabilities and business outcomes
• The first problems you will focus on include improving cost-effective QA environments for internal partners, building a better testing strategy for service-to-service validation, and solving gaps in model settings and entitlements testing
• Over time, you will help Cedar move toward a future where intelligent automation, LLM-powered code review, and platform-level validation reduce manual review bottlenecks and improve confidence at scale
• This is a hands-on leadership role
• You will manage and grow a small team, work deeply with engineers, partner closely with stakeholders across Engineering, Product, Delivery, and Integrations, and help Cedar raise the bar for how we build and validate software
• Lead Cedar’s Platform Testing team, including strategy, execution, talent development, and stakeholder alignment
• Develop and execute a testing platform roadmap that improves developer velocity, product reliability, and confidence in releases
• Partner with Staff Engineers and Architects to implement testing strategies as we move toward service-oriented architecture, including patterns for service-to-service validation, test environment strategy, and product-aligned coverage
• Improve the developer experience of testing by reducing slow feedback loops, lowering test environment friction, and making failures easier to understand and act on
• Own and evolve internal QA environment strategy, including cost-effective environments that support Delivery, Product, and Integrations partners during go-lives
• Drive solutions for testing model settings, entitlements, and other complex configuration-driven behavior
• Help reshape Cedar’s current testing approach into a deliberate strategy that balances unit, integration, end-to-end, contract, and environment-based testing
• Promote testing best practices across engineering through documentation, training, stakeholder engagement, and direct collaboration with product engineering teams
• Partner with engineering leaders, architects, product teams, and internal customers to understand pain points and translate them into clear platform investments
• Explore and apply LLM-powered workflows for code review, test generation, validation, and quality automation
• Manage and grow engineers on the team, including coaching, performance management, career development, and hiring
• Create a culture of high ownership, technical excellence, pragmatic decision-making, and continuous improvement
• What Success Looks Like
• In the first year, you will have developed a clear roadmap and strategy for Platform Testing, built strong alignment with stakeholders, grown talent on the team, and filled key team gaps through internal development or hiring
• In the first six months, you will have made meaningful progress on three critical problems:
• Cost-effective QA environments that support Delivery, Product, and Integrations partners with a user-friendly setup process
• A testing pipeline and management approach for model settings and entitlements
• A cohesive strategy for testing services as Cedar moves further into service-oriented architecture
• Longer term, success means Cedar’s engineers ship faster with higher confidence, our validation strategy scales with system complexity, and Platform Testing becomes a critical enabler of Cedar’s reliability and competitive advantage