[Remote] Senior Manager, Backend

Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Weight Watchers is hiring a Senior Manager of Backend Engineering to lead multiple teams building and operating the core systems behind its member experience. The role focuses on scaling backend teams and platforms, delivering reliable services and data, and partnering across Product, Infrastructure, Data, and Design.

Responsibilities

• Recruit, manage, and mentor a diverse team of backend engineers, from entry-level to Principal level
• Foster an engineering culture focused on operational readiness, documentation, incident learning, and continuous improvement
• Create an environment where teams have clear ownership boundaries and the autonomy to ship quickly without fragmenting the ecosystem
• Drive the execution of multi-quarter technical strategies for the member platform, aligning your teams on the "why," "what," and "how"
• Ensure teams define and meet SLIs/SLOs that reflect member happiness, prioritizing reliability and performance in "moments that matter"
• Identify and remove structural bottlenecks - such as brittle integrations or duplicated micro-services - to accelerate delivery across product squads
• Oversee the backend services powering member identity, food databases, and tracking foundations to ensure they are trustworthy and scalable
• Partner with Data and ML teams to ensure backend systems provide reliable, well-modeled data for journey personalization and experimentation
• Lead your teams through the transition to modern cloud architectures and event-driven patterns that support a global digital health platform
• Act as a key partner to Product and Design to ensure backend systems are built for iteration and measurable outcomes
• Translate technical debt, risks, and architectural needs into crisp options and consequences for executive and cross-functional forums
• Build trust through clarity, predictable follow-through, and calm leadership under pressure
• Manage the end-to-end delivery of backend features and platform components across multiple squads
• Lead performance reviews, career development discussions, and workforce planning for your organization
• Review technical designs and drive decision-making on hard tradeoffs between speed, quality, and cost
• Embed security and compliance (HIPAA-adjacent workflows) into standard team practices
• Drive a "FinOps" mindset, ensuring backend systems scale sustainably while balancing cloud costs

Skills

• You have a proven track record of managing and scaling engineering teams at a system-wide level
• You anchor team priorities in member outcomes and business impact, avoiding unnecessary complexity
• You produce clear documentation and can influence stakeholders across competing priorities
• You can zoom from high-level roadmap planning to deep-diving into execution details when necessary
• 8+ years in backend engineering with 3+ years in a formal management or leadership role for large-scale consumer systems
• Strong understanding of modern distributed systems (AWS), APIs, and data modeling for high-scale environments
• Proven ability to lead cross-team initiatives from design through successful production adoption
• Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience

Benefits

• Hybrid work environment to allow our employees to find the right work-life balance.
• Eligible employees are covered by worker's compensation insurance for work-related injuries or illness.

Company Overview

Company H1B Sponsorship