Product Engineering Manager

About the Role

As the Engineering Manager for Pratilipi FM, you will lead a lean, high-impact product engineering team operating within a fast-paced environment. You will be responsible for execution, technical direction, and team growth while working collaboratively with a design-first Product Manager and a cross-functional growth team. Your primary goal is to scale the team effectively without sacrificing quality, enhance engineering velocity and reliability, and deliver outstanding user experiences that drive retention and revenue.

Responsibilities

Generational Company

• Embody and champion Pratilipi's culture of ownership with accountability, transparency, and high-agency problem solving.
• Drive the Generational Company mindset by building systems, processes, and teams that ensure sustainability for the future.
• Make strategic decisions focused on long-term results and innovation, not just quarterly outcomes.
• Act as a cultural multiplier by promoting clarity, judgment, and long-term thinking in all interactions.
• Foster a culture of intelligent honesty, bringing clarity, data, and courage to discussions, while communicating with empathy.

Product & Delivery

• Collaborate with PM, Design, and Growth teams to translate user needs into shippable, measurable product increments.
• Balance speed with technical quality and maintain observability and rollback readiness.
• Create and maintain engineering dashboards for monitoring velocity, stability, and release confidence.
• Ensure the application is performant under load and responsive during marketing peaks.

Technical Excellence

• Serve as a hands-on engineer and strengthen architecture to accommodate required scaling.
• Advocate for and enforce engineering best practices suited for current and near-future stages.
• Work closely with the Platform team to leverage shared infrastructure, security, and core systems for scalable innovation.
• Champion design-first experiences ensuring that products feel crafted, not merely functional.

People & Process

• Hire and retain talented engineers.
• Coach team members to operate with autonomy and accountability.
• Set clear Key Result Areas (KRAs) tied to velocity, uptime, and business outcomes.
• Collaborate with growth teams to enable data-driven experimentation.
• Instill a culture of you build it, you own it, fostering ownership from code to impact.

Requirements

• 8 to 12 years of experience in engineering, with at least 2 years in a leadership role.
• Strong understanding of backend and mobile technologies.
• Ability to lead both product and platform decisions.
• A data-driven mindset and a bias for experimentation and automation.
• Curiosity for enhancing user experiences.
• Capacity to work in a high-ambiguity, fast-paced environment.

Qualifications

• Familiarity with RESTful API design and best practices in API versioning.
• Working knowledge of SQL, data modeling, and query optimization.
• Appreciation for secure development practices, including OWASP Top 10 standards.
• Experience with programming languages and frameworks:
  • Kotlin and modern Android architecture components.
  • Golang or NodeJS for backend services.
• Proficient with Docker for containerized deployments and MySQL for data storage.
• Core infrastructure experience with AWS services, including ValKey, SQS, SNS, Lambda, ECS, EC2, S3.
• Knowledge of observability tools like StatsD, Grafana, and CloudWatch.

Why This Role Matters

You will help Pratilipi FM transition from a rapidly growing product to a reliable and scalable business model where technology fosters creativity rather than impedes it. Enjoy autonomy, accountability, and a significant role in the journey towards achieving the company's next $3M ARR milestone.

Growth Path

This role is designed as a springboard towards becoming the Head of Engineering at Pratilipi FM. You will focus initially on executing excellence and leading the current engineering team. The next stages will involve tech strategy, team scaling, mentor ship of engineers, shaping the tech roadmap, and aligning organizational structure with business growth. You will receive mentorship from the VP of Engineering and Senior Members, with structured feedback to effectively shape FM's engineering direction.