Engineering Manager, Core Services

The Opportunity:    

We are seeking an experienced and innovative Software Engineering Manager to lead one of our Core Services Engineering teams at Vivid Seats. This backend-focused team designs, builds, and operates shared services and APIs that power our web, mobile, Customer Experience and other applications. 

You will manage a team of software and quality engineers responsible for mission-critical platform services, with a strong emphasis on API design, scalability, performance, and reliability. You will help define and uphold service-level objectives and SLAs, establish strong observability practices (including metrics, logging, and alerting), and lead effective incident response and post-incident learning. 

In this role, you will guide architectural decisions, promote operational excellence, and ensure our services are resilient, well-documented, and easy to consume across the Vivid Seats ecosystem. At Vivid Seats, you will have the opportunity to shape the foundation of the platform - building highly available systems that enable world-class customer experiences and support the continued evolution of the ticket marketplace. 

In addition to bringing Engineering best practices, you will develop a collaborative, cross-disciplinary and high-performing team while overseeing and improving organizational design, structure, priorities, management processes and reporting information systems. You will be responsible for hiring and promoting talent while building productive, value-added partnerships with stakeholders. You will also be integral in building an engaged corporate culture. “How” results are achieved will be as important as “what” is achieved. 

  
How your role contributes to the success of Vivid Seats:    

• Demonstrate deep fluency in designing and operating high-volume, transactional backend systems built with Spring and Spring Boot, deployed on AWS, and backed by data stores such as MySQL RDS and Snowflake, supporting revenue-critical applications including order and payment processing.
• Partner with product managers, business stakeholders, and dependent engineering teams to define, design, and deliver new backend capabilities and shared services that support web and mobile applications.
• Identify and drive opportunities to evolve, scale, and optimize our backend services and API strategy, ensuring performance, reliability, and ease of consumption across the platform.
• Lead complex backend initiatives, serving as a technical subject matter expert in service design, system architecture, implementation, deployment, and operational support within a fast-paced Agile environment.
• Provide strong technical leadership and input into service-level design and architecture decisions, driving innovation in scalability, resiliency, data flow, and integration patterns.
• Hire, develop, and retain a high-performing team of backend engineers, while contributing to broader engineering talent, culture, and organizational initiatives.
• Lead the team to excellence in execution, delivering high-quality, reliable backend systems and APIs on time and in alignment with defined SLAs and expectations.
• Create alignment across engineering teams and stakeholders, inspiring teams through clear communication, effective leadership, and a strong sense of ownership for core platform services. 

How your role expectations will progress as an Engineering Manager in the first 30, 90, and 180 days:    

30 days in   

• Acclimate to Vivid Seats’ values and organizational goals to understand how your department drives initiatives forward. 
• Understand your teams’ contributions and the needs of stakeholders that rely on your deliverables to bring business objectives to life. 
• Set weekly touch points with direct reports to understand their role, motivations, and needs, building trust and leading with empathy.  
• Develop basic understanding of applications, tech stack, and development process.    

90 days in   

• Empower and coach team members to achieve personal and functional goals that correlate to department objectives. 
• Develop and lead initiatives for your team that enhance process, drive innovation, and build on Vivid Seats values.  
• Delivery of stable, scalable, and high-performing backend services and APIs that support our B2C application suite as well as other critical areas of our business. 
• Contribute to our approaches, methods, or technologies to support overall business goals and drive team efficiency.    
• Meaningfully contribute to department roadmap exercises that balance current needs with future strategic initiatives.    
• Use Datadog for end-to-end observability of backend services, including APM, metrics, and logging, to maintain performance, availability, and reliability. 

180 days in   

• Monitor and evolve team deliverables, individual goals, and overall performance to ensure alignment with broader initiatives of your department and the organization while coaching your team to grow skill sets. 
• Collaborate with stakeholders to confirm accurate prioritization and refine processes for collaboration and best practices. 
• Demonstrate deep understanding of backend architectures and shared services that power B2C web and mobile applications, including order management and payment processing systems, and the business context that drives Core Services work. 

What You’ll Bring:    

• A customer first attitude with proven technical experience working in software engineering, preferably with modern languages (like Java) and frameworks such as Spring Boot.
• Demonstrated technical leadership in a fast-paced Agile environment where you have led high performing teams, proposed designs, and collaboratively solved architectural challenges related to the growth and development of products.  
• Ability to diagnose technology related escalations from production systems and ensure timely deliveries. 
• A love of technology, passion for programming, and a strong curiosity to solve real problems with code at scale.  
• Experience setting clear performance and business outcome expectations with a team of direct reports.  
• Ability to drive work efforts and impact through the team; establishing and maintaining role, ownership and accountability definitions between direct reports and their counterparts. 
• Effective planning and collaboration skills to partner with Product Management and stakeholders on the Product and technology roadmaps.  
• A proven track record of delivering solutions to market. 
• Excellent communication and teamwork skills while demonstrating a sense of urgency and accountability. 
• Self-Starter with strong work ethic, growth mindset, and superior attention to detail.  

Vivid Seats Pay Transparency Disclaimer: Full time offers from Vivid Seats include annual bonus incentives and equity for all employees; FLEX PTO; mental health days; medical, dental, and vision insurance; 401K matching; monthly credits and discounts for attending live events; and a variety of additional workplace perks. The typical starting salary within the full salary range for this position can range. Factors which may affect starting salary include geographic market, relevant skills/experience, education, and other qualifications.   

Full Salary Range: $160,000 – $195,000 USD  

https://corporate.vividseats.com/careers/  

Location: Chicago, IL    

We believe in a hybrid 3 days/week in-office working model, which provides employees the flexibility to take advantage of in-person and remote collaboration. Check out our brand new HQ office, bursting with the energy of live events fandom and the vibrancy of Chicago’s rising tech scene. 

 

&