Platform Engineering Manager

At Bazaarvoice, we create smart shopping experiences. Through our expansive global network, product-passionate community & enterprise technology, we connect thousands of brands and retailers with billions of consumers. Our solutions enable brands to connect with consumers and collect valuable user-generated content, at an unprecedented scale. This content achieves global reach by leveraging our extensive and ever-expanding retail, social & search syndication network. And we make it easy for brands & retailers to gain valuable business insights from real-time consumer feedback with intuitive tools and dashboards. The result is smarter shopping: loyal customers, increased sales, and improved products. The problem we are trying to solve : Brands and retailers struggle to make real connections with consumers. It's a challenge to deliver trustworthy and inspiring content in the moments that matter most during the discovery and purchase cycle. The result? Time and money spent on content that doesn't attract new consumers, convert them, or earn their long-term loyalty. Our brand promise : closing the gap between brands and consumers. Founded in 2005, Bazaarvoice is headquartered in Austin, Texas with offices in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. Its official: Bazaarvoice is a Great Place to Work in the US , Australia, India, Lithuania, France, Germany and the UK! Are you an experienced, pragmatic, and highly communicative engineering leader ready to drive the future of our global cloud platform? We're seeking a Platform Engineering Manager to join our team in the UK. This pivotal role involves leading a talented team of senior and staff-level engineers, collaborating closely with our Platform Engineering Manager in India, and tackling significant technical challenges to standardize and modernize our infrastructure. You'll play a crucial part in evolving our cloud capabilities, enhancing our developer experience, and directly impacting how our engineers deliver value by allowing them to focus on service development rather than underlying infrastructure. What you'll do: Lead and Empower a High-Performing Global Team: You'll directly manage, mentor, and foster the growth of a team of 6 senior and staff-level platform engineers. You'll set clear expectations, support their continuous professional development, and nurture a collaborative and effective team environment, drawing on your empathy, keen understanding of team dynamics, and pragmatic approach. Collaborate on Technical Direction & Strategy: You'll work closely with engineering leadership and technical leads to define technical direction and strategy for our platform. You'll ensure the adoption of excellent engineering practices, efficient operations, and effective agile processes (JIRA/scrum) within your team. Drive Cloud Platform Strategy & Execution: You'll lead the management and evolution of our critical cloud infrastructure across GCP and AWS. You'll work collaboratively with the Senior Director of Engineering Excellence and Architecture, and other Principal Engineers, to develop and prioritize the platform product backlog. Modernize & Standardize Our Toolchain: You'll champion and drive the ongoing global project to enhance our compute related toolchains, focusing on significant standardization, modernization, and migration to Kubernetes-based compute (EKS) from EC2. Enhance Developer Experience & Reduce Cognitive Load: You'll proactively identify and implement solutions to lower the cognitive workload for our development teams, enabling them to concentrate on developing innovative services. Ensure Operational Excellence & Reliability: You'll oversee CI/CD tooling (GitHub Action, Jenkins), manage our EKS and Kubernetes developer platform, and participate in on-call rotations to maintain high availability and operational efficiency for critical systems. Foster Collaborative Leadership: You'll work in close partnership with the Platform Engineering Manager in India, sharing sprint planning, workload, and best practices across the global platform team. You'll collaborate effectively with service team owners to align platform strategy with broader organizational goals. Tackle Technical Debt: You'll strategically address significant technical debt and aging infrastructure, prioritizing and executing modernization efforts to build a more resilient, efficient, and future-proof platform. Recruit & Grow Top Talent: You'll anticipate future team requirements and partner with our talent team to recruit, evaluate, and hire outstanding new engineers. Performance Feedback & Growth: You'll provide regular, constructive performance feedback, recognizing achievements and identifying opportunities for growth, and complete formal performance evaluations. Technical Guidance & Support: You'll offer advice and assistance to teams on technical difficulties that arise, leveraging your experience to guide them toward solutions. Stay Current: You'll remain current on development tools and technologies that your team members are using, ensuring our practices stay cutting-edge. What you'll bring: Proven People Management Experience: 3-4+ years of direct people management experience in software or platform engineering, with a demonstrated history of successfully leading, coaching, and nurturing technical teams. This is explicitly not a first-time management role. Deep Cloud Expertise: A strong understanding of and experience with managing and architecting infrastructure in both GCP and AWS environments. While not a hands-on coding role, you should be technical enough to understand architectural decisions and good engineering principles, supporting your team's technical lead. Strong Kubernetes Knowledge: Solid experience with Kubernetes, including an understanding of managing EKS clusters and building robust developer platforms on top of Kubernetes. You're aware of the capabilities and challenges of this technology. CI/CD Awareness: A strong understanding and practical experience with modern CI/CD pipelines and tooling, including GitHub Actions and Jenkins. You can effectively guide discussions around these critical development processes. Strategic & Analytical Thinking: An analytical approach to evaluating capability needs, suitability of initiatives, and a data-driven mindset for decision-making. You're willing to take calculated risks and iterate quickly. Strong Communication & Collaboration: Exceptional communication skills (verbal and written), with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts, inspire stakeholders, and foster transparent, collaborative relationships. You approach interactions with thoughtfulness, an open mind to new ideas, and a readiness to adapt as circumstances evolve. Problem-Solving & Pragmatism: A pragmatic approach to identifying issues (scalability, performance, security, compliance, operational readiness) and providing advice/assistance on technical difficulties. You demonstrate adaptability and a proactive stance toward incorporating new knowledge and shifts in direction. Collaborative Mindset: A strong ability to partner effectively with technical leads and other engineers, empowering them to drive technical solutions while maintaining overall accountability for team delivery and operations. You bring empathy and a curiosity for diverse viewpoints to every collaboration. Continuous Learning: A strong growth mindset and a commitment to staying current on development tools and technologies. Requirements: 6+ years of Software/Platform Engineering experience. 3-4+ years as a People Manager/Lead. Experience with AWS (and/or GCP) offerings, development, and networking platforms. Experience leading teams developing applications in languages like Java, Go, or Python. Bachelors degree in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience. Skilled in the knowledge and usage of a wide range of cloud technologies. Desirable: Proven results-oriented track record of delivery in complex environments. Demonstrated ability to inspire and mentor a technical team towards high performance. Knowledge and experience in maintaining systems with 24x7 operations, high uptime requirements (e.g., 5 9s), and under high utilization. Experience managing large budgets for AWS or other cloud platforms. Ability to adapt quickly to new development environments and changing business requirements. Works well in a cross-team environment and can effectively drive cross-team solutions that have complex dependencies and requirements. Demonstrated experience in setting long-term strategic technical direction for one or more software engineering teams.. #LI-EM1 Why join Bazaarvoice? Customer is key We see our own success through our customers outcomes. We approach every situation with a customer first mindset. Transparency & Integrity Builds Trust We believe in the power of authentic feedback because its in our DNA. We do the right thing when faced with hard choices. Transparency and trust accelerate our collective performance. Passionate Pursuit of Performance Our energy is contagious, because we hire for passion, drive & curiosity. We love what we do, and because were laser focused on our mission. Innovation over Imitation We seek to innovate as we are not content with the status quo. We embrace agility and experimentation as an advantage. Stronger Together We bring our whole selves to the mission and find value in diverse perspectives. We champion whats best for Bazaarvoice before individuals or teams. As a stronger company we build a stronger community. Commitment to diversity and inclusion Bazaarvoice provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all team members and applicants according to their experience, talent, and qualifications for the job without regard to race, color, national origin, religion, age, disability, sex (including pregnancy, gender stereotyping, and marital status), sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, military/veteran status, or any other category protected by federal, state, or local law in every location in which the company has facilities. Bazaarvoice believes that diversity and an inclusive company culture are key drivers of creativity, innovation and performance. Furthermore, a diverse workforce and the maintenance of an atmosphere that welcomes versatile perspectives will enhance our ability to fulfill our vision of creating the worlds smartest network of consumers, brands, and retailers. Please note: Candidates who are successful will be required to undergo a Basic level DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) background check.