Zendesk · 18 hours ago
Engineering Manager
Madison, WI
Full-time
Hybrid
Mid, Senior Level
$210K/yr - $316K/yr
5+ years expZendesk is a company that powers billions of conversations in customer service. As an Engineering Manager, you will lead the team responsible for Zendesk’s core search capabilities and focus on scaling and supporting your team to drive modernization and manage critical infrastructure.
Customer ServiceData ManagementEnterprise SoftwareSoftwareTechnical Support
Responsibilities
Provide day-to-day people management, mentorship, and support their professional development
Foster a collaborative, inclusive, and productive team culture, maintaining a high bar for engineering excellence
Recruit, onboard, and retain high-caliber engineers for the team
Set and ensure a high bar for quality; ensure the teams' output (software, architecture, infrastructure) is robust, scalable, and well-tested
Work with Product Managers, designers, and Senior Engineers to define, scope, estimate, and deliver high-impact projects with a regular cadence
Guide the technical vision and execution for the team's roadmap, focusing on modernizing data delivery systems, enriching platform capabilities at scale, and overseeing the strategy for Elasticsearch deployment, cluster management, operational tooling, and cost-efficiency initiatives
Ensure the team utilizes modern CI/CD practices (e.g., Github Actions), containerization/deployment (Kubernetes on AWS), and operational tooling (Spinnaker, Datadog, incident.io)
Maintain a strong focus on operational excellence for all critical components, including incident response and proactive monitoring
Qualification
Required
2+ years of experience directly managing and leading software engineers
5+ years of experience working in software development, preferably in a high-scale, production environment
Deep understanding of software development lifecycle and comfortable leading teams to release complex features built for scale
Experience or strong understanding of search technologies like Elasticsearch, including deployment, scaling, and operational management
Familiarity with large-scale, high-throughput distributed platforms and architectural decisions in this space
Familiarity with data pipelines, queuing/messaging systems (Kafka, SQS, or similar), and a backend language like Ruby or Java
Experience with modern CI/CD (Github Actions), containerization/deployment (Kubernetes on AWS), and operational tooling (Spinnaker, Datadog, incident.io)
Highly empathetic and emotionally intelligent, able to build and nurture healthy relationships
Ability to communicate technical and strategic roadmaps to diverse audiences, effectively leveraging data and metrics (including system health dashboards, performance indicators, and project velocity from tools like JIRA) to align stakeholders and drive informed decisions
Preferred
Prior experience working for a Software-as-a-service (SaaS) company at scale
Experience with AI-driven data augmentation or relevance initiatives
Insights into the challenges of integrating and scaling SaaS systems
Experience in platform modernization and re-architecture initiatives
Benefits
Bonus
Benefits
Related incentives
Company
Zendesk
Zendesk develops a customizable customer service platform for organizations.
5001-10000 employees
H1B Sponsorship
Zendesk has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (50)
2024 (69)
2023 (37)
2022 (92)
2021 (93)
2020 (44)
Funding
Current Stage
Public CompanyTotal Funding
$85.5MKey Investors
RedpointMatrixBenchmark
2022-11-22Private Equity
2022-06-24Acquired
2019-09-18Grant
Leadership Team
Mikkel Asger Svane
CEO and Co-Founder
Adrian McDermott
Chief Technology Officer
Recent News
Index Ventures
2026-01-06
Small Business Trends
2026-01-04
Small Business Trends
2025-12-25
Company data provided by crunchbase