Data Engineering Manager, Audience Lifecycle

NPR is a thriving, mission-driven multimedia organization producing award-winning news and music programming. They are seeking an Audience Lifecycle Software Engineering Manager to lead a collaborative team in building and delivering features for audience lifecycle technologies, while partnering with various teams to identify priorities and improve applications.

Responsibilities:

• Manage, mentor, and coach a team of Software Engineers, actively investing in their career growth, professional development, and psychological safety
• Lead recruitment and hiring efforts for software engineering vacancies on your team, and manage the structured onboarding and training of new engineering staff
• Partner with product managers, UX designers, data analysts, and editorial partners across all stages of the product development lifecycle
• Lead the technical planning, scoping, and execution of future software projects, facilitating Agile ceremonies (stand-ups, backlog refinements, sprint planning, and retrospectives) as needed
• Conduct thorough software design and code reviews, providing constructive and substantive feedback to maintain code health, architectural integrity, and security standards
• Analyze, propose, and implement engineering workflow improvements to enhance the speed, safety, and quality of software delivery
• Identify common engineering blockers and pain points, writing helper tools or automation scripts to optimize team developer experience (DX)
• Oversee and coordinate the team's response to critical production bugs or infrastructure incidents
• Coordinate workflows, code standards, and deliverables for external contributors and specialized development vendors

Requirements:

• 3+ years of experience directly managing, mentoring, or leading data engineers within an agile organization
• Prior experience as an individual contributor in engineering, testing, and shipping robust code for at least one large-scale data application or service
• Demonstrated experience collaborating within cross-functional Agile/Scrum product teams
• Experience with GCP, AWS or other similar cloud computing platforms
• Experience managing high availability, distributed and fault tolerant applications, services and APIs
• Proficiency in SQL and at least one other general purpose programming language such as Python
• Hands-on experience working with modern version control systems (primarily Git)
• Ability to translate complex technical concepts, system architectures, and engineering trade-offs to non-technical stakeholders
• Demonstrated competency in fostering an equitable, supportive, and inclusive team culture
• Strong analytical skill set with an 'automation-first' mindset for resolving manual bottlenecks and production issues
• A strong focus on quality and empathy for end-users, ensuring highly performant, accessible application experiences
• Deep fluency in Agile methodologies and software project delivery management
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or equivalent practical work experience
• Professional experience managing both internal employees and external agency vendors/contractors
• Experience implementing, managing and maintaining data lakes, data warehouses and data ingestion pipelines
• Experience working with and managing large datasets in platforms such as Salesforce, BigQuery and Looker
• Experience with audience segmentation, targeting systems, or marketing data infrastructure at scale
• Strong interpersonal skills with a focus on leadership of cross functional teams
• Proven ability to manage multiple projects effectively and succeed in a fast-paced environment