Engineering Manager, Coursera

• Education & Experience: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related field, OR equivalent practical experience (e.g. 3+ years as a hands-on software engineer building web applications or distributed systems)
• Industry Experience: 5+ years in software product development or a related field, including prior experience leading engineering teams (2+ years in an engineering management role). You should have a proven track record of delivering software projects and managing cross-functional development teams
• Technical Background: Strong software engineering foundation with experience in system design, data structures, and algorithms. (You should have professional coding/development experience in your background, even if this role is not an IC position.)
• Inspirational Leadership: You are an inspiring and transparent leader who empowers and motivates your team to achieve ambitious goals
• High Emotional Intelligence: Possess a high degree of empathy, humility, and strong communication skills. You excel at building inclusive team cultures and adeptly manage interpersonal dynamics
• Rigorous Problem Solving: Demonstrate a creative and analytical mindset with strong technical problem-solving abilities. You can navigate complexity and guide your team to innovative, well-reasoned solutions
• Thriving in Ambiguity: You excel at driving clarity and results in ambiguous and complex situations, possessing the boldness and grit to forge a path forward even when details are undefined
• Product & Platform Vision: Experienced in balancing rapid product feature delivery with long-term platform health. You have a proven ability to manage technical debt and strategically invest in platform infrastructure for high leverage
• Platform Ownership Expertise: Experience leading a team that owns a product platform or critical infrastructure. Ideally, you have firsthand experience defining team charters and ownership boundaries, especially during new platform evolution
• Generative AI Applications: Proficient with Generative AI applications, including prompt engineering and using APIs such as OpenAI, Claude, or Gemini
• Scalable Systems Expertise: Demonstrated experience in building and operating large-scale distributed systems using modern backend technologies like Java or Scala, and API frameworks like GraphQL and gRPC. You understand how to design systems for high availability, performance, and maintainability at scale
• Full-Stack Familiarity: Familiar with modern frontend technologies (React, TypeScript, or similar) and their integration with backend services. While depth in one area (backend or frontend) is expected, the ability to understand and guide end-to-end system architecture is highly valued

Desirable

• As the Engineering Manager for the Content Management team, you will lead a full-stack engineering team responsible for creating these critical capabilities
• Your role involves technical leadership, architectural guidance, close collaboration with cross-functional stakeholders, and driving strategic initiatives to deliver scalable, innovative solutions aligned with Coursera’s broader strategic goals
• You will foster a high-performance team culture, encourage innovation, and ensure operational excellence, directly contributing to Coursera's mission of delivering impactful, high-quality learning experiences worldwide
• Building the Team: Partner with cross-functional stakeholders (Product, Design, Data, Content Operations) to refine the team’s charter, ensure alignment with broader business goals, and support overall team health and growth
• Mentoring: Act as a role model and coach for engineers. Conduct regular career development conversations, provide constructive feedback, and inspire engineers to achieve their best
• Hiring: Identify key skill gaps and growth areas on the team. Drive the hiring pipeline by sourcing, interviewing, and onboarding talented engineers to build a well-rounded, high-performing team
• Advising (Technical Leadership): Provide hands-on technical guidance to engineers as they design systems and tackle complex problems. Encourage sound architectural decisions and help team members grow into technical leaders in their product work
• Product Enablement: In partnership with Product Management, curate a compelling vision for content authoring. Translate high-level product needs into an actionable engineering roadmap. Prioritize and drive key initiatives forward, run sprint planning and stand-ups, and ensure the team delivers product features that delight content creators and learners
• Platform Leadership: Balance building new features with managing tech debt to maintain a reliable, scalable platform. Evolve the content authoring platform for high leverage – architect systems and services that can accelerate multiple product initiatives across Coursera. Ensure consistency and quality in the user experience by creating reusable components and frameworks for content
• Mediating: Foster an inclusive, collaborative team environment. Proactively address interpersonal issues and facilitate crucial conversations with empathy and fairness. Ensure every team member feels empowered, engaged, and comfortable sharing ideas and concerns