Senior Engineering Manager, Backend (Content Foundations)

About Scribd, Inc.

Scribd, Inc. is dedicated to advancing human understanding through its four key products: Scribd®, Slideshare®, Everand™, and Fable. These platforms serve billions worldwide, transitioning users from mere access to insight and expertise.

Culture at Scribd, Inc.

The company embraces an environment where employees are encouraged to be authentic and bold, engage in debates, commit to adaptive changes, and focus on customer prioritization. Scribd Flex offers a flexible model balancing remote work with occasional in-person collaboration, strengthening teamwork and culture.

About The Team

The Content Foundations team is central to Scribd's strategic vision. It manages a massive repository of human-created knowledge comprising hundreds of millions of documents and presentations. This platform processes all content uploads, transforming and serving it to millions of users and downstream teams like trust & safety and AI platform teams.

Role Overview

We seek an Engineering Manager to lead the Content Foundations team tasked with innovating how content enters Scribd. This leadership role involves driving large-scale data infrastructure and applied AI initiatives, setting platform vision, managing team growth, and collaborating with content organization stakeholders.

Key Responsibilities

• Define vision and lead the transition to a real-time AI-powered content ingestion system on one of the world's largest document platforms.
• Integrate advanced AI technologies alongside ML and AI teams to ensure all documents are intelligently processed from upload for use by readers and AI agents.
• Collaborate with product teams to deliver impactful supply-side features, improve content discoverability, and support content contributors.
• Build, inspire, and manage a founding team of backend and AI data engineers, cultivating culture, standards, and career development.
• Operate the team as a product, setting roadmaps, priorities, and commitments crucial for the content organization's planning.
• Embed security as a core design principle for safe processing of untrusted inputs and safeguarding data at scale.
• Partner with senior leaders across multiple teams to align and advance a shared content mission.

Required Qualifications

• Over 8 years in software engineering with at least 3 years in leadership roles managing backend, data infrastructure, or platform engineering teams.
• Expertise in high-throughput distributed systems and data pipeline architectures, with experience evolving live high-volume systems toward real-time processing.
• Strong interest or experience in deploying applied AI, including ML model integration and LLM-based document handling.
• Experience building and managing platforms as products with well-designed interfaces and service level agreements.
• Security-focused in system design, addressing safe input handling, least privilege, and data protection.
• Commitment to operational excellence encompassing reliability, observability, and robust on-call practices.
• Excellent communication skills for collaborating across product, engineering, and cross-functional groups.

Preferred Skills

• Background in large-scale document processing including conversion pipelines, vision-language parsing, and media transcoding.
• Knowledge of retrieval augmented generation (RAG), vector search, chunking, embedding pipelines, and grounding systems for LLMs.
• Experience with user-generated content or marketplace platforms emphasizing content quality, trust, and scalability.
• Proven ability to establish and grow a new engineering team and platform from inception.

Compensation & Location

The role’s compensation is determined based on geographic market rates and individual qualifications, including a competitive base salary, equity ownership, and comprehensive benefits.
For Canadian employees (such as in Ottawa), the typical salary range is between 198000 to 252500 CAD annually.

Workplace Requirements

Applicants must reside within or near designated cities including Ottawa, Toronto, or Vancouver for Canadian candidates, ensuring accessibility to the workplace as required.

Benefits

• Flexible work model (Scribd Flex)
• Extensive medical, dental, and vision insurance
• Mental health and disability support
• Generous paid leave including vacation, sick, holidays, sabbaticals, and volunteer time
• Paid parental and family support benefits
• Retirement matching and equity opportunities
• Professional development and learning programs
• Wellness and home office stipends
• Complimentary access to Scribd product suite
• Enterprise AI tool access

Equal Opportunity Commitment

Scribd, Inc. promotes diversity and inclusion, welcoming candidates from all backgrounds and providing interview accommodations upon request.