Senior Engineering Manager

Job Description

Join us at Zendesk, where we're on a mission to power exceptional service for every person on the planet. We're accelerating that ambition by building products rooted in AI, automation, and intelligent customer experiences, because behind every interaction lies an opportunity to make a human connection.

We’re seeking a Senior Engineering Manager to lead our team focused on cloud governance, IAM, secrets management and delivery. You’ll strengthen our cloud security architecture and compliance posture through automation and close partnership with internal engineering teams. By delivering secure‑by‑default platforms and guardrails, you’ll protect the integrity of Zendesk’s systems while accelerating product engineering velocity.

What you’ll be doing 

• Lead, coach, and develop a distributed team of engineers - both office-based and remote - ensuring alignment and consistent, high‑quality delivery.

• Manage a portfolio of parallel initiatives with distinct profiles: internal governance systems; audit activities; high-availability production environment infrastructure; etc.

• Partner with Corp Dev, Security, and product teams during acquisitions to assess risk and standardize access, secret storage, and policy-as-code guardrails across newly acquired infrastructure.

• Operate with excellence: monitor and improve risk and reliability; own on-call and incident response; continuously evaluate new capabilities (including AI-assisted tooling) to increase velocity safely.

• Represent your organisation's work and priorities to senior leadership, communicating progress, risks, and trade-offs clearly and concisely.

• Collaborate directly with the Senior Director of Cloud Infrastructure on the organisation roadmap, priorities, and team development. 

What you bring to the role

Required

• 5+ years of experience in a similar people management role, with a background in hands-on, technical roles.

• Demonstrated ability to manage and govern enterprise-grade AWS environments. Deep familiarity with key AWS services and concepts.

• An understanding of modern DevOps methodologies: Infrastructure as Code; GitOps model of development.

• Strong cross-functional partnership skills - you work effectively with Product Management, Security, CIO, and peer engineering leaders to drive outcomes.

• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal - you can represent your organisation's work to senior leadership and communicate trade-offs clearly.

• Prior experience working with security/compliance frameworks (SOC 2, FedRAMP, ISMAP) and supporting audits.

Preffered

• Familiarity with tools such as Claude and Cursor, and the ability to apply them responsibly to improve speed and quality.

• Experience with non-AWS cloud providers (GCP, Azure)

• Familiarity with reporting tools like Wiz and Snowflake.

The US annualized base salary range for this position is $200,000.00-$300,000.00. This position may also be eligible for bonus, benefits, or related incentives. While this range reflects the minimum and maximum value for new hire salaries for the position across all US locations, the offer for the successful candidate for this position will be based on job related capabilities, applicable experience, and other factors such as work location. Please note that the compensation details listed in US role postings reflect the base salary only (or OTE for commissions based roles), and do not include bonus, benefits, or related incentives.

The intelligent heart of customer experience

Zendesk software was built to bring a sense of calm to the chaotic world of customer service. Today we power billions of conversations with brands you know and love.

Zendesk believes in offering our people a fulfilling and inclusive experience. Our hybrid way of working, enables us to purposefully come together in person, at one of our many Zendesk offices around the world, to connect, collaborate and learn whilst also giving our people the flexibility to work remotely for part of the week.

As part of our commitment to fairness and transparency, we inform all applicants that artificial intelligence (AI) or automated decision systems may be used to screen or evaluate applications for this position, in accordance with Company guidelines and applicable law.

Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer, and we’re proud of our ongoing efforts to foster global diversity, equity, & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment and employees at Zendesk are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We are an AA/EEO/Veterans/Disabled employer. If you are based in the United States and would like more information about your EEO rights under the law, please click here.

Zendesk endeavors to make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans pursuant to applicable federal and state law. If you are an individual with a disability and require a reasonable accommodation to submit this application, complete any pre-employment testing, or otherwise participate in the employee selection process, please send an e-mail to peopleandplaces@zendesk.com with your specific accommodation request.