Engineering Manager - Workflows and UI Foundations (f/m/d) at Contentful

About the Opportunity We are looking for an Engineering Manager to lead two highly leveraged platform teams at Contentful: UI Foundations and Workflows • UI Foundations owns Contentful’s core web UI foundations and design system so teams can build modern, consistent, accessible product experiences faster. • Workflows owns Contentful’s Orchestration Platform — the workflow + automation engine behind approvals, tasks, triggers, and action execution. This is a high-impact role with broad reach: your work will accelerate many product teams and improve the foundation customers rely on every day. What to expect? In this role you’ll work closely with senior stakeholders across the business to understand strategy and goals, and collaborate with internal teams and external partners to keep our architecture, tech stack, and development practices aligned to deliver impact. • Build and support high-performing, globally distributed teams, with a culture of collaboration, ownership, and continuous improvement. • Partner closely with Product and Design to shape and deliver the roadmap for UI Foundations and Workflows, balancing near-term needs with long-term platform health. • Enable platform adoption across teams through clear interfaces, documentation, migration support, and predictable release practices. • Evolve UI Foundations (Web App shell & navigation, Navigation Framework, Forma 36, localization, accessibility, shared frontend packages) so teams can ship consistent, accessible experiences with confidence. • Evolve the orchestration platform (workflow APIs, execution semantics, integrations/actions, reliability/observability) to support approvals, tasks, triggers, and automation at scale. • Strengthen operational practices with healthy on-call/support models, incident response, post-incident learning, and measurable reliability improvements. • Coach and develop engineers across levels, supporting growth, feedback, and sustainable delivery habits. • Collaborate with AI Enablement and product teams so AI-powered capabilities (e.g., AI Actions/Suggestions) integrate cleanly into workflows and UI foundations with clear boundaries and reliable behavior. What you need to be successful? We’re looking for an Engineering Manager who enjoys platform environments where success depends on adoption, stability, and strong partnership with many internal customers. To succeed in this role, you should: • 2+ years of experience managing cross-functional development teams and delivering complex solutions with Product and Design partners. • Comfortable working in ambiguity and change, bringing structure and clarity while balancing short-term delivery with long-term platform strategy. • Experience with platform or foundational teams where success depends on adoption, stability, documentation, and thoughtful rollout/migration support. • Technical breadth across modern web platforms and backend distributed systems; able to review architecture, ask strong questions, and help teams make good tradeoffs (app shell/navigation, design systems, shared packages, APIs, workflow engines, event-driven execution). • Familiarity with event-driven distributed systems concepts such as queues, orchestration, retries, idempotency, long-running workflows, and reliability—enough to guide discussions and support strong engineering decisions. • Strong quality mindset for platforms: observability, incident readiness, performance, safe rollout practices (versioning, backwards compatibility, migrations, deprecations). • Experience supporting accessibility and localization work in a way that becomes part of normal engineering practice (not a one-off effort). • Product-minded: able to translate early ideas into workable technical options and tradeoffs, especially where flexibility and simplicity need careful balance. • Strong collaboration across many stakeholders and teams, helping align on priorities, dependencies, and sequencing with transparency. • People leadership strength: hiring, coaching, feedback, and creating an inclusive environment where engineers can do their best work. • Familiarity with modern AI-enabled product development and comfort supporting teams to use AI responsibly (for productivity and for product integration), with measurable outcomes and a strong quality bar. • Experience with B2B SaaS and enterprise expectations (security, compliance, reliability) is a plus. Bonus: • Experience leading design system adoption and governance at scale (contribution models, versioning strategy, migration playbooks). • Experience building workflow/automation platforms (state machines, orchestration engines, integration ecosystems) with strong operability requirements. • Familiarity with security/compliance considerations for systems that execute actions and integrate with external services (auditability, permissions, data handling). What’s in it for you? • Join an ambitious tech company reshaping the way people build digital experiences • Full-time employees receive Stock Options for the opportunity to share in the success of our company • Fertility and family building benefits, including a lifetime reimbursable wallet to support your growing family. • We value Work-Life balance and You Time! A generous amount of paid time off, including vacation days, sick days, education days, compassion days for loss, and volunteer days • Time off to care for and focus on your growing family • Use your personal annual education budget to improve your skills and grow in your career • Enjoy a full range of virtual and in-person events, including workshops, guest speakers, and fun team activities, supporting learning and networking exchange beyond the usual work duties • An annual wellbeing stipend to care for your physical, financial, or emotional health • A monthly communication phone/internet stipend and phone hardware upgrade reimbursement. • New hire office equipment stipend for hybrid or distributed employees. Get the gear you need to work at your best. Who are we? Contentful is a leading digital experience platform that helps modern businesses meet the growing demand for engaging, personalized content at scale. By blending composability with native AI capabilities, Contentful enables dynamic personalization, automated content delivery, and real-time experimentation, powering next-generation digital experiences across brands, regions, and channels for more than 4,200 organizations worldwide. More than 700 people from more than 70 nations contribute their energy and creativity to Contentful, working from hubs in Berlin, Denver, San Francisco, London, New York, and distributed worldwide. Everyone is welcome here! “Everyone is welcome here” is a celebrated component of our culture. At Contentful, we strive to create an inclusive environment that empowers our employees. We believe that our products and services benefit from our diverse backgrounds and experiences, and we are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applications will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, age, physical [dis]ability, or length of time spent unemployed. We invite you to apply and join us! If you need reasonable accommodations at any point during the application or interview process, please let your recruiting coordinator know. Please be aware of scammers who may fraudulently allege to be from Contentful. These types of fraud can be carried out through copycat websites, fake email addresses claiming to be from our company, or social media. We do not ask for your personal information, such as bank account numbers, identification numbers, etc, through social media or chat-based apps, nor do we request or send money for the purchase of business equipment. If you suspect fraud, please report it to your local authorities, as well as reach out to us at [Upgrade to PRO to see contact] with any information you may have. By clicking “Apply for this job,” I acknowledge that I have read the “Contentful’s Candidate Privacy Notice” and hereby consent to the collection, processing, use, and storage of my personal information as described therein.