Software Engineering Manager (Mission Ops)

About the role

ABOUT SIFT

Sift is the data infrastructure platform for hardware engineering teams. Sift turns high-frequency telemetry into engineering insights for mission-critical systems. Teams use Sift to build and operate rockets, satellites, autonomous vehicles, energy systems, defense platforms, and more.

Founded by former SpaceX engineers who built the tools behind Dragon and Starlink, Sift is building the data infrastructure to herald the AI era for physical systems.

THE ROLE

We are looking for a hands-on Software Engineering Manager to lead our Mission Ops squad. Mission Ops builds the systems and tools our customers use to monitor the health and operations of their machines and fleets, get alerted when a machine enters a critical state, start root-cause analysis and track issues through resolution. You will own technical scope for the squad's user interfaces, APIs and backend systems. Our software must deliver best-in-class performance, scalability and reliability through the most demanding launch campaigns and live operations. Many of our customers run space operations on Sift today, using it to develop and operate rockets, satellites, and orbital laboratory and storage hardware in low Earth orbit and geostationary orbit. In addition to aerospace, we serve other key sectors, such as biomedical tech, energy, transportation and construction.

This role will report directly to the VP of Engineering and is ideal for someone who loves working on the cutting edge of science and technology.

RESPONSIBILITIES

- Leadership: Manage and build a team of high-performing engineers, provide mentorship and guidance to accelerate their growth.

- Strategy: Collaborate with our Product and Go-To-Market teams to define a technical roadmap shaped by how customers monitor and operate their fleets.

- Execution: Ensure the team delivers best-in-class results at high velocity while meeting the reliability bar that launch and live operations demand.

- Process Excellence: Establish and refine engineering processes, agile rituals and use of AI to accelerate development and expand our core capabilities.

- Hands-on Contribution: Actively engage the architecture and codebase across frontend, APIs and backend services, contribute to high-impact features and help resolve critical technical challenges.

REQUIRED SKILLS

- Experience: 7+ years in software engineering with 2+ years in a people management role.

- Education: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, STEM, or a related field.

- Software Development: Strong experience with distributed systems and web applications using Go, Rust, or Python, and with modern frontends built in React and TypeScript.

- Operations Expertise: Experience building real-time monitoring, alerting, or incident management systems. Familiarity with time-series data and event-driven architectures. Expertise in observability tools such as Grafana or Prometheus.