Software Engineering Manager

Frontiers is one of the world’s largest and most impactful open-access research publishers, dedicated to making peer-reviewed, quality-certified science openly accessible. They provide a trusted, AI-powered open science platform supporting over three million published authors across more than 220 journals. Their mission focuses on accelerating scientific solutions for healthy lives on a healthy planet through open science.

• Minimum 4+ years managing engineering teams plus prior hands-on software engineering experience.
• Proven delivery of backend, platform, or infrastructure services; managing shared/platform services preferred.
• Solid background in backend engineering and distributed systems.
• Knowledge of cloud infrastructure, CI/CD, and service reliability practices.
• Understanding of platform/shared-services as internal service providers.
• Experienced in balancing people management (~60%) and technical/business activities (~40%).
• Budget and resource planning experience.
• Clear communication with technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Professional-level English (spoken and written).

Nice to have:

• Hands-on experience with authentication/identity protocols (OAuth 2.0, OIDC, JWT) and/or messaging/event-driven systems (Kafka, RabbitMQ).
• Experience with Microsoft Azure, Kubernetes (AKS), and .NET/C# environments.
• Familiarity with GDPR/consent and security/compliance aspects.
• Experience leading a team through a CI/CD or platform migration.
• Interest in Spec-Driven Development and AI-First delivery workflows (Cursor, MCP, Technology Framework).
• Background in scientific publishing.

• Lead day-to-day team operations, resource allocation, and task assignment across IAM and Messaging portfolio.
• Translate shared-services roadmap and portfolio objectives into actionable engineering plans.
• Coordinate resources, manage risk, and deliver outcomes for authentication, messaging, and related infrastructure.
• Partner with Platform Product Manager to align roadmap priorities with technical feasibility and platform health.
• Guide technical direction with Senior Engineers, including architectural and design review.
• Set clear expectations, give feedback, support career growth, and manage team performance.
• Own SLAs/SLOs, incident management, and operational excellence at team level.
• Identify and implement process improvements to enhance delivery efficiency and reliability.
• Represent team cross-functionally and escalate/manage technical and delivery risks with senior leadership.

Frontiers actively embraces diversity and is a safe, welcoming workplace. Recruitment is free from discrimination including based on race, national or ethnic origin, age, religion, disability, sex, gender identity, or sexual orientation.