Roku - Engineering Manager - Backend Services

About the Role :

As an Engineering Manager Backend Services, you will lead a team of talented engineers responsible for designing, developing, and maintaining large-scale distributed systems that form the backbone of Rokus streaming ecosystem. Youll be expected to guide architecture decisions, champion best practices, and work cross-functionally with Product, Infrastructure, and Security teams to deliver innovative, reliable, and high-performance backend solutions. This is a hands-on leadership role ideal for a technical manager who enjoys mentoring teams while staying actively involved in architecture and design reviews.

Key Responsibilities :

Technical Leadership :

- Lead the design, development, and delivery of highly scalable backend systems and microservices powering Rokus core products.

- Architect and implement robust cloud-native solutions leveraging AWS and GCP platforms.

- Ensure system performance, scalability, and reliability through rigorous testing, monitoring, and optimization.

- Lead code and design reviews, promoting technical excellence and consistent engineering standards.

- Champion the use of CI/CD pipelines, modern DevOps practices, and container orchestration (Docker/Kubernetes).

Team Management :

- Manage and mentor a team of 10- 15 software engineers (backend/full-stack).

- Provide clear direction, set performance expectations, and nurture technical and leadership growth within the team.

- Recruit, onboard, and retain top engineering talent while fostering a collaborative, inclusive team culture.

- Conduct 1:1s, performance reviews, and career development planning for team members.

Cross-Functional Collaboration :

- Partner closely with Product Management, Business Operations, and Data Engineering to define roadmaps and align priorities.

- Collaborate with Security, Finance, and Compliance teams to ensure alignment with KYC, KYB, SOX, and audit requirements.

- Drive system integration with financial, content, and streaming data systems to enable new monetization models and insights.

Strategic & Operational Excellence :

- Drive the modernization and re-architecture of legacy systems into microservice-based, event-driven frameworks.

- Define and track engineering KPIs uptime, performance, release velocity, incident rate, and defect density.

- Own the delivery of key initiatives end-to-end, ensuring quality, predictability, and timely execution.

- Contribute to technical strategy and long-term architectural vision for Rokus backend ecosystem. Required

Skills & Experience :

- 10+ years of total experience in backend or full-stack engineering.

- 3+ years of managerial experience leading software engineering teams in a fast-paced, agile environment.

- Strong hands-on experience with Java (primary), Python, JavaScript, and Node.js should be comfortable reviewing and discussing code.

- Proven expertise in distributed systems, high-volume APIs, event-driven architectures, and data pipelines.

- Deep understanding of cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP) EC2, S3, Lambda, CloudFormation, Kubernetes, etc.

- Familiarity with financial systems, including SOX, KYB, and KYC compliance frameworks.

- Experience building and scaling CI/CD pipelines using tools like Jenkins, GitHub Actions, or CircleCI.

- Strong grounding in agile methodologies (Scrum/Kanban) and DevOps practices.

- Excellent analytical, communication, and decision-making skills.

Preferred Qualifications :

- Prior experience in media, streaming, or digital entertainment platforms.

- Exposure to data engineering / machine learning integration within product backends.

- Experience with API Gateway, message queues (Kafka / RabbitMQ), and monitoring stacks (Prometheus / Grafana).

- Bachelors or Masters degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.