Engineering Manager , Subscriptions Team ( Payments )

SoundCloud empowers artists and fans to connect and share through music. Founded in 2007, SoundCloud is an artist-first platform empowering artists to build and grow their careers by providing them with the most progressive tools, services, and resources. With over 400+ million tracks from 40 million artists, the future of music is SoundCloud.

We are looking for an Engineering Manager to join our Subscriptions Team within the Payments domain.

Our team is responsible for building and maintaining the systems that power subscriptions and purchases across iOS, Android, and web platforms. From integrating with external vendors to building a seamless and secure checkout experience, we enable millions of users to access and enjoy premium features on SoundCloud.

This is a hybrid leadership role with a strong hands-on component (~50%). You will contribute directly to the codebase while leading a team of engineers, shaping technical direction, and ensuring high-quality delivery. You’ll play a key role in evolving our subscription platform, improving reliability, and driving new payment initiatives.

Key Responsibilities:

• Own team delivery, including sprint planning, prioritisation, and execution against business goals and KPIs.
• Collaborate with cross-functional partners to deliver a seamless checkout and subscription experience.
• Partner with product and engineering stakeholders to align team objectives with company strategy.
• Identify and remove delivery blockers while improving team processes and ways of working.
• Support and grow engineers through coaching, feedback, mentorship and setting clear goals.
• Foster a healthy, inclusive team culture with strong ownership and accountability.
• Identify and address conflicts in a timely manner.
• Observe and measure team health/happiness and ensure issues are addressed.
• Design, develop, and maintain backend systems for subscription-related purchases and transactions.
• Contribute hands-on to production systems, setting a high bar for code quality, testing, and observability.
• Lead the team in building scalable, maintainable, and performant services across the payments stack.
• Drive architecture decisions and ensure alignment with broader system design and engineering standards.
• Balance feature development with technical debt and long-term system sustainability.
• Build and maintain integrations with third-party payment providers (APIs, webhooks).
• Establish strong operational practices including monitoring, alerting, and incident management.
• Contribute to hiring, onboarding, and building a diverse, high-performing team.

Experience & Background

• Proven ability to operate as a hands-on technical leader while managing a team.
• Experience leading delivery, making trade-offs, and driving outcomes in a product-focused environment.
• Experience managing engineers, including coaching, feedback, and performance development.
• Effective communication skills across technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Comfortable working in ambiguous environments and driving clarity.
• Ability to set technical direction and guide teams toward simple, sustainable solutions.

Strong backend engineering experience with languages such as Ruby or Go.

• Experience building and scaling distributed systems, APIs, and backend services.
• Solid understanding of system design, databases (MySQL), and cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, Kubernetes).
• Strong problem-solving skills and a proactive approach to improving systems and processes.

Bonus Points

• Experience with subscription systems, billing platforms, or e-commerce domains.
• Familiarity with mobile payment ecosystems (Apple App Store, Google Play).
• Experience with GraphQL APIs and analytics platforms (e.g., BigQuery).
• Background in experimentation, pricing, or monetization systems.
• Experience in infrastructure, reliability, and large-scale system operations.

About us:

• We are a multinational company with offices in the US (New York and Los Angeles), Germany (Berlin), and the UK (London)
• We provide a flexible work culture that offers the opportunity to collaborate and connect in person at our offices as well as accommodating work from home
• We are deeply committed to ensuring diversity, equity and inclusion at all levels of our organization and fostering a community where everyone’s voice, perspective and experience is respected and heard.
• We believe a strong team is made by investing in employees through mentorship, workshops and enrichment opportunities

Benefits:

• Not located in Berlin? No worries, we offer extensive relocation support including allowances, one-way flights, temporary accommodation and, by partnering with Expath, on-the-ground support on arrival
• Interested in a gym membership, photography course or book? We have a Creativity and Wellness benefit!
• Employee Equity Plan
• Generous professional development allowance
• Flexible vacation and public holiday policy, where you can take up to 35 days of PTO annually
• We offer free German courses at the beginner, intermediate and advanced levels
• Various snacks, goodies, and 2 free lunches weekly when at the office

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at SoundCloud

SoundCloud is for everyone. Diversity and open expression are fundamental to our organization; they help us lead what’s next in music by understanding and empowering our creators and fans, no matter their identity. We acknowledge the challenges in the music industry, and strive to influence an inclusive culture where everyone can contribute respectfully and thrive, especially the historically marginalized communities that many of our creators, fans and SoundClouders identify with. We are dedicated to creating an inclusive environment at SoundCloud for everyone, regardless of gender identity, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, migration background, national origin, age, disability status, or care-giver status.