Software Engineering Manager

Who you are

• The ideal candidate has strong software engineering and cloud infrastructure expertise, experience running production pipelines, familiarity with hosted analytic products (ML or otherwise), and a proven ability to lead a high-performing team in a fast-paced, cross-functional environment
• This role reports to the Senior Director, Ground Systems Software Engineering
• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience
• A minimum of eight (8) years of professional experience in software engineering, including experience building or operating complex distributed, autonomous, or mission‑critical systems
• At least two (2) years of experience leading engineering teams as a people manager or technical lead with formal leadership responsibilities
• Minimum of two years of experience managing or leading high-performing engineering teams, including hiring, capacity planning, mentoring, and cross-functional collaboration
• Demonstrated experience designing and building scalable production software solutions and architectures
• Hands on experience with cloud services such as AWS EKS, S3, EC2, Aurora / RDS, SQS, SNS, Batch, etc
• Excellent communication skills and expert at bridging the gap between highly technical teams and non-technical business units
• Some programs this role supports may require the candidate to be a U.S. citizen
• Master’s degree (or higher) in a relevant technical field
• Ten or more years of professional engineering experience, including leadership of teams responsible for high-availability or mission-critical software
• Two or more years of experience in the geospatial industry
• Knowledge and experience with MLOps and DataOps as a practice
• Experience with distributed compute environments such as Kubernetes and Dask
• Strong Python or Golang proficiency and experience writing production software for data ETL, micro-services, geospatial, data analytics, and/or cloud deployment
• Knowledge of system safety, fault tolerance, redundancy, and recovery strategies in autonomous or operationally sensitive environments
• Proven track record partnering with Product, Sales, and Executive leadership to align roadmaps with business goals
• Prior experience aligning engineering execution with both commercial production SLAs and program‑specific requirements, deliverables, or milestones

What the job involves

• BlackSky is seeking an experienced Engineering Manager to lead our newly established Product Insights team. This team is responsible for accelerating the delivery of highvalue insight products directly through the BlackSky platform — enabling customers to derive value from BlackSky imagery without relying on multiple external vendors
• While the BlackSky imaging constellation provides a powerful foundational layer, the broader market demands turnkey insight products, seamless workflows, and integrated partner solutions. The Product Insights team will bridge that by designing, building, integrating, and operating scalable product pipelines that make advanced analytics available natively within BlackSky
• Integrating and operating products from partners or new analytic flows across a variety of modalities
• Developing platform capabilities to host, orchestrate, and disseminate Blacksky products
• Ensuring reliability, consistency, and quality of new and existing insight products delivered to customers
• Collaborating across imagery, platform, partner engineering, and product teams to accelerate insight product timetomarket
• Build, develop, and retain a high-performing engineering team focused on product hosting, partner product integration, and platform-based product delivery
• Set technical strategy and roadmap for the Product Insights team, ensuring the platform can scale to support a diverse portfolio of internal and partner insight products
• Lead design and implementation of new product hosting architectures, including pipeline execution, versioning, reliability, and monitoring
• Collaborate with product, platform, AI/analytics, imagery, and partner engineering teams to define requirements, align priorities, and accelerate product readiness
• Identify and remove cross-team roadblocks related to product ingestion, data availability, platform constraints, or partner integration
• Maintain deep technical involvement through code reviews, architectural decisions, and occasional hands-on development
• Foster a culture of continuous improvement, technical excellence, and strong ownership of product reliability and customer impact
• Proactively identify risks, bottlenecks, and opportunities to accelerate product delivery, especially where new flows or partner integrations require novel approaches
• Support sprint planning, team capacity management, and roadmap development in partnership with product leadership
• Other responsibilities as assigned

Benefits

• Competitive compensation: We offer competitive compensation as well as 401(k) with employer match.
• 100% health insurance: We cover 100% of our employee’s health premiums for medical, dental and vision insurance with various plan choices such as HRA, LSA and HSA
• Time off: Striking a balance between work and our personal lives is important. We offer 15 days of PTO, 11 company holidays, four floating holidays (pro-rated based on hire date) and one day of paid volunteerism leave per year.
• Flexible work schedule: Need to focus on family certain hours of the day? Are you a night owl? We can work with you to build a schedule that works best for you and your teammates.
• Maternity leave: New birth mothers receive up to eight weeks of paid leave for medical recovery due to childbirth, supplementing employer-provided disability insurance.
• Parental leave: For births or adoptions, new parents are offered paid leave to care for and bond with their new child.
• ESPP: Be part of the growth and success story at BlackSky by participating in our Employee Stock Purchase Program.
• PC or Mac: You select the type of computing environment that works best for you. And, yes, we are deeply into cloud computing.
• Casual offices: No stuffy environment at BlackSky. We want you for who you are, not what you wear.
• On-site perks: Like to work out at lunch? Visit our on-site gyms. And recharge afterwards with free snacks and beverages.
• Team get-togethers: We host events across teams. Learn who your coworkers are, not just where they sit and what they do.
• Unique swag: Lots of companies offer embroidered hats and gear (and we do, too). But, which of them offer mission patches too?