Engineering Manager
Designer Fund is a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage tech companies using design to improve health, sustainability, or prosperity for people. It backs founding teams, particularly those with design backgrounds, across sectors like fintech, healthcare, climate tech, and developer tools.
About Designer Fund
Designer Fund is an early-stage venture capital firm that invests in tech companies leveraging design to drive positive outcomes in health, sustainability, and financial prosperity. Its portfolio spans a wide range of sectors including financial infrastructure (Stripe), preventative health (Omada), collaborative tools (Notion), developer tools (Netlify), product management (Linear), payroll and benefits (Gusto), design tools (Framer), and healthcare infrastructure (Commure), among dozens of other companies across fintech, climate tech, healthcare, EdTech, and AI. The firm also runs 'Designer Founders,' a community and platform highlighting designers who have gone on to found and lead companies, reflecting its focus on backing design-driven founders and design-centric startups from early stages through growth and acquisition.
Skills
About the Role
You will oversee the development and maintenance of backend systems that power a global transit platform. You'll combine technical leadership with hands-on engineering, helping shape both the architecture of the platform and the growth of the engineers on your team, supporting systems that impact hundreds of thousands of riders every week. You'll grow and mentor engineers, scale core backend systems, shape distributed systems architecture, roll up your sleeves to code and debug production issues, partner with cross-functional teams to solve real-world transit problems, and improve engineering processes to ship quickly while keeping the platform reliable.
Requirements
- 10+ years building backend systems, designing distributed, reliable, high-performance services
- Strong in Python, Java, C++, or C# and confident in making technical decisions that scale
- Experience managing and developing engineering teams
- Knowledge of cloud platforms (AWS), microservices, and Kubernetes
- Deep understanding of databases, performance tuning, and debugging complex systems
- Strong communication skills across engineers, product managers, and non-technical stakeholders
Responsibilities
- Grow and mentor high-performing engineers, creating a culture of ownership, learning, and technical excellence
- Scale core backend systems to handle more riders, drivers, and real-time transit data
- Shape the architecture of distributed systems as the platform grows globally
- Code and debug tough production issues alongside the team
- Partner with cross-functional teams to turn transit problems into real-world solutions
- Improve engineering processes, from CI/CD practices to coding standards
Benefits
- Free medical plans
- 401K matching
- Catered lunch on Wednesdays