Engineering Manager

Location: Santa Clara, CA (5 days/week in office) Comp: ~$250K–$300K base + equity

Who We Are

Building the Backbone of Distributed Applications. At Orkes , we are reimagining how developers build reliable, scalable, event-driven applications without wrangling complex infrastructure. Born from Netflix's battle-tested open-source project, OSS Conductor , our platform is now powering billions of mission critical workflows across fintech, e-commerce, logistics, healthcare, and more.

Our platform powers billions of mission critical workflows across industries like fintech, e-commerce, logistics, and healthcare helping companies run the core operations of their business with confidence. These are the workflows behind every transaction, every delivery, every patient check-in, quietly orchestrating our digital world. We’re solving some of the hardest infrastructure problems: how do you make distributed systems reliable, observable, and scalable – without every team having to reinvent the wheel?

We absorb the complexity of distributed systems, letting teams build with confidence. We’re hiring a strong engineering leader to own the Cloud & Platform engineering function at Orkes. This is a high-impact, highly operational role; you’ll lead engineers while staying deeply hands-on in architecture, systems, and production challenges.

The primary goal is to drive velocity of engineers on the team.

What We’Re Looking For

Strong background in distributed systems / cloud infrastructure Proven experience as a hands-on engineer (recently) Experience leading engineers (formal or informal) Ability to operate in high-context-switch, fast-moving environments Startup experience or large-company experience with understanding of scale What Won’t Work Managers who have been out of hands-on engineering for too long Pure people managers without deep technical credibility Engineers who struggle with fast pace or shifting priorities Ideal Profile Former senior/staff engineer stepping into leadership OR current EM who still codes and leads technically Someone who has seen both startup and structured scale