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Engineering Manager, Subscriptions

Lead a team of backend engineers to develop Strava's subscription and payments infrastructure while remaining hands-on in the codebase.

Location
San Francisco, California, United States
Compensation
Not disclosed
Level
lead
Type
full time · Hybrid

Posted by employer 2 months ago

First seen on Joblaze 6 hours ago

Last verified on the company career page 6 hours ago

Apply at Strava → Save job Scanned from strava.com

What you'll build

  • Lead a team of server engineers building subscription and payments backend
  • Own the technical roadmap for payments and subscription infrastructure
  • Drive platform and product work
  • Keep payment and subscription services reliable and healthy
  • Grow your engineers

Must have

  • 5+ years of professional software development experience in backend engineering
  • 2+ years of engineering management experience
  • Proficiency in at least one of Strava's backend languages
  • Experience with distributed systems and production infrastructure

Nice to have

  • Experience with payments, billing, or subscription systems

Practical constraints

  • More than half of your time on-site in San Francisco office, three days per week

Role intensity

20% coding — mostly leadership/strategy

Requirements

Experience
5+ years

Not disclosed in this posting: compensation, visa sponsorship.

Joblaze summary

The Engineering Manager for Subscriptions at Strava leads a team focused on developing and maintaining the backend systems that handle payments and subscriptions for millions of users. This role requires proficiency in backend languages like Ruby or Python, along with experience in distributed systems and a strong understanding of payment infrastructure. Ideal candidates will have a background in software development and engineering management, with a commitment to mentoring and growing their team. Strava emphasizes a collaborative environment, making this position suitable for those who thrive in a hands-on, technical leadership role.

Joblaze insights

  • Listed today — first seen on Joblaze November 8, 2026. Last confirmed on Strava's careers page November 8, 2026.
  • This exact title is also open at 1 other location at Strava: Strava SF.
  • Python appears in 12.2% of 647 comparable lead management roles in United States; Scala appears in 0.2% of 647 comparable lead management roles in United States.

Quick facts

Is the Engineering Manager, Subscriptions role remote?
It's hybrid — Strava expects some on-site time in San Francisco, California, United States.
How much experience is required?
At least 5 years of relevant experience for this Engineering Manager, Subscriptions role.
Where is the role based?
Strava is hiring for this position in San Francisco, California, United States.
What's the tech stack?
Joblaze extracted these technologies from the posting: Go, Java, Kafka, Kubernetes, MySQL, Python.
What seniority level is this role?
Strava targets lead candidates for this position.
Is this full-time or contract?
Full-time for this Engineering Manager, Subscriptions role at Strava.

From the original posting

About This Role:

Strava is hiring an Engineering Manager on our Subscriptions team. This team owns Strava's payments and subscription platform, both the infrastructure and the user-facing products it powers. We're looking for a technical manager who still writes code and wants to grow a small team of backend engineers while owning some of Strava's most critical systems.

We follow a flexible hybrid model that translates to more than half of your time on-site in our San Francisco office, three days per week.

What You'll Do:

  • Lead a team of server engineers building Strava's subscription and payments backend, systems that power how millions of athletes subscribe, pay, and manage their subscriptions.

  • Own the technical roadmap for payments and subscription infrastructure. You'll partner closely with product and engineering leadership on priorities, balancing platform investment, reliability, and delivery.

  • Drive both platform and product work. Your team owns our subscription infrastructure and the user-facing products it powers.

  • Stay hands-on in the codebase. You'll write code, own technical designs, and make architecture decisions alongside your team, not just review them.

  • Hire, develop, and retain engineers at multiple levels. Coach people through career growth, give direct feedback, and build a team that gets stronger over time.

  • Keep payment and subscription services reliable and healthy. You own on-call, incident response, and the operational bar for your team's systems.

  • Partner cross-functionally with product, design, accounting, and marketing to identify the highest-leverage work and ship it.

  • Treat ownership seriously. Your team's systems handle payments, billing, and subscription state for millions of users. You take reliability, correctness, and incident response personally.

  • Grow your engineers. You'll manage people at different career stages and help each one develop, whether that's getting someone to senior or helping a more experienced engineer take on larger technical ownership.

  • Build for the long term. You make pragmatic tradeoffs between shipping now and investing in the platform, and you can explain those tradeoffs clearly to partners.

  • Stay technical. You're not managing from a distance. You have informed opinions on system design and you can unblock engineers by jumping into the code.

  • Make the team better. You care about how the team works, not just what they ship. You'll fix what's slowing people down and build processes that stick.

What You'll Bring to the Team:

  • 5+ years of professional software development experience in backend engineering.

  • 2+ years of engineering management experience, or demonstrated tech lead experience where you were already doing the job of coaching engineers, driving technical direction, and owning delivery for a team.

  • Proficiency in at least one of Strava's backend languages (Ruby, Java, Scala, Python, or Go).

  • Experience with distributed systems and production infrastructure (MySQL, Redis, Kafka, Kubernetes, or similar).

  • Experience with, or genuine interest in, payments, billing, or subscription systems.

  • A track record of helping engineers grow through direct feedback, mentorship, and sponsorship.

  • We'd love to talk to you about the future of Strava’s core technologies and your role in developing them

For more information of benefits, please click here.

 

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