Why This Job is Featured on The SaaS Jobs
This role stands out in the SaaS ecosystem because it sits at the infrastructure layer that ultimately determines whether an enterprise product feels responsive and dependable at scale. Airtable’s usage by large organizations makes performance a product feature, not an internal metric, and the Performance and Architecture remit reflects the kind of platform maturity seen in established SaaS companies serving demanding, high-concurrency workloads.
For a SaaS engineering management career, the scope offers durable leverage: leading systems work that touches nearly every product area, shaping architectural direction, and balancing reliability with iteration. The combination of deep backend ownership and direct involvement when enterprise accounts encounter scale constraints mirrors how senior platform leaders operate in B2B SaaS, where technical decisions routinely influence adoption, retention, and long-term maintainability.
The position is best suited to a manager who stays close to technical details while operating through other senior engineers, and who is comfortable coordinating across product engineering, go-to-market partners, and incident response rhythms. It will fit someone who prefers high-impact platform problems over narrow feature delivery, and who is motivated by making complex systems measurably faster and more predictable for large customers.
The section above is editorial commentary from The SaaS Jobs, provided to help SaaS professionals understand the role in a broader industry context.
Job Description
Airtable is used by more than half of the Fortune 500 companies to power their mission-critical initiatives. Enterprise customers leverage Airtable to build sophisticated apps, and orchestrate deep, end-to-end workflows. As these customers push Airtable to ever-larger scale, the performance and interactive responsiveness of every base becomes the foundation everything else is built on. Scalability and performance are the number one concern for most of our largest enterprise customers, and the Performance & Architecture team owns that problem at its core.
We are seeking an Engineering Manager to join our Enterprise engineering pillar to lead the Performance & Architecture (P&A) team. P&A is responsible for the worker process that serves as the backend of every user-facing Airtable base. This is the deepest backend team that sits within product engineering, and it is one of the most intersectional teams in the company - its work touches nearly every part of the Airtable product.
P&A’s mission is to make Airtable fast and reliable at scale. The team's current initiative, "100x," is a ground-up rewrite in Rust of the proprietary in-memory database behind every base that will let Airtable bases function well at dramatically higher scale while improving development velocity across engineering. You'll be joining at a pivotal moment: your decisions will shape the architecture that backs every Airtable base for years to come.
Please note: while we employ a hybrid working model at Airtable (flexible in working from the office or elsewhere), we are looking to hire candidates at this level who are based in San Francisco and open to coming into the office ~2-3 times/week for team collaboration.
What you'll do
- Lead, manage, and grow a team of high-functioning systems engineers responsible for the core backend of every Airtable base.
- Engage directly with our largest enterprise customers, including in pre- and post-sales contexts. You'll be tapped when high-stakes accounts hit performance or scale challenges, and you'll work alongside AEs and Solutions Consultants to land and implement major deals.
- Partner closely with senior and staff ICs on deeply technical decisions across backend product initiatives, and to hold your own technically with the most senior engineers on the team.
- Partner with engineering leaders to drive technical decisions and initiatives, building products in a high-quality and sustainable way.
- Nurture a team of passionate and capable engineers: multiply the impact of senior engineers and coach and grow early-career engineers.
- Drive operational excellence and implement processes that help the team scale and stay productive, while preserving the agility our dynamic environment demands.
Who you are
- 5+ years of experience as an engineer (previously in a staff or TL-level IC position) AND 4+ years as a manager, or a similar combination.
- A systems background, with a genuine interest in improving product performance and the end-user experience - not just low-level performance for its own sake.
- Direct experience working with enterprise customers or large, third-party partners, including holding challenging technical conversations and helping sophisticated customers understand a broad, highly technical product. Experience supporting large, complex customers through technical issues is a strong plus.
- Strong experience working closely with Product Managers to define products, manage tradeoffs, and drive adoption.
- Experience navigating and reasoning about large systems.
- A strong operational instinct and experience leading teams through incidents and on-call.
- Experience leading high-performing engineering teams in a fast-paced environment, and growing and mentoring engineers.
- Experience managing, organizing, and prioritizing multiple projects and work streams.
- A deep appreciation for understanding the Airtable product end to end - the role demands fluency across the entirety of what we build.
Airtable is an equal opportunity employer. We embrace diversity and strive to create a workplace where everyone has an equal opportunity to thrive. We welcome people of different backgrounds, experiences, abilities, and perspectives. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, protected veteran status or any characteristic protected by applicable federal and state laws, regulations and ordinances. Learn more about your EEO rights as an applicant.
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If you have a medical condition, disability, or religious belief/practice which inhibits your ability to participate in any part of the application or interview process, please complete our Accommodations Request Formand let us know how we may assist you. Airtable is committed to participating in the interactive process and providing reasonable accommodations to qualified applicants.
