Engineering Manager

About this role

ABOUT MIDJOURNEY

Midjourney is an independent research lab exploring new mediums of thought and expanding the imaginative powers of the human species. We are a small self-funded team focused on design, human infrastructure, and AI. The team is strikingly small relative to our community, which means the work you lead here reaches millions of people within days, and you will have more say over the product than at any Big Tech firm.

ABOUT THE ROLE

Midjourney started on Discord and is now a web-first product that millions of people use every day. The web team builds all of it: the create experience, profiles, moodboards, sharing, subscriptions, the surfaces where the community lives. We're hiring an Engineering Manager to own that team and what it ships.

Ownership here means the whole thing. You are accountable for the delivery, quality, and performance of the web product, and for the health of the team building it. You set technical direction with the engineers, amplify what each of them can own, and make the calls when priorities collide. You work with design and product from the first sketch, and with backend and infra so the seams hold as the product changes underneath you, which it does constantly.

The role stays technical and it is AI-native. Agents write a large share of our code, and we expect the same leverage in how you manage: use AI tools to handle the routine parts of the job so your time goes to hiring, judgement calls, and the hardest problems. Some weeks that means working with design and product to spec and sequence projects. Other weeks it means being in the codebase yourself, with agents alongside: reviewing implementations, prototyping, unblocking a stuck project. The team is small and senior. It doesn't need process for its own sake; it needs someone who raises the bar on what ships and clears the way to ship it.

We care more about what you have built than where you have built it. Great people at Midjourney have started in high school just as often as they have come from notable companies and universities. If you feel like you've got most of the skills we're looking for, but are worried that it might not be enough, reach out anyway. Let's chat.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

- Own delivery and quality of the web product end to end, and be accountable for its performance, reliability, and pace of improvement.

- Amplify the team rather than grow it. Raise what each engineer can own and ship, so a small group keeps pace with a widening set of products and business goals. Hire when leverage runs out, and hire well.

- Set technical direction with your engineers: architecture, standards, when to rebuild and when to patch.

- Work with design, product, and engineering leadership to organise, spec, and deliver projects, and make priority calls when they conflict.

- Stay in the code. Review implementations, prototype, and unblock the team's hardest problems yourself when that's the fastest path.

- Run the team through one-on-ones and technical planning that people find useful rather than obligatory.

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

- You've managed engineering teams building consumer products at real scale, and you still write code.

- Deep familiarity with a modern web stack (React, TypeScript, Next.js or similar). You can hold your own in a design review and know when an estimate is wrong.

- A hiring track record. You've built teams, not just inherited them, and you can close strong engineers on your own.

- You know how to make a team fast without adding ceremony: small loops, clear owners, decisions written down.

- You push the boundaries of AI-assisted development. We use these tools heavily, the bar for what one engineer can ship keeps rising, and we want people who build the workflows the rest of the team copies.

- You communicate clearly and directly. The role lives at the seam between web, backend, design, and product, and we value straightforward collaboration-focused feedback.

- You take care of the people around you, not just the code. Caring about humanity starts with caring about your teammates. We hire engineers who actively help the people next to them grow.

NICE TO HAVE

- Performance work on media-heavy consumer web apps: rendering, latency, image delivery at scale.

- Experience with products serving multiple surfaces (web, mobile, desktop, embedded clients) from shared foundations.

- You worked in AI or generative media before the current cycle.

- You've led a team through a platform transition, a rewrite, or a product that outgrew its architecture.

WHY MIDJOURNEY

- Speed of a startup, freedom and resources of a research lab. No investors, no quarterly reporting cycle, no committees deciding the roadmap.

- Tiny team, large ambitions. Decisions show up in production within days, in front of one of the largest creative communities in the world.

- You will run the team behind the surface millions of people use daily, and own what it becomes. Few engineering management roles anywhere offer that scope on a team this small.

LOGISTIC

- Full-time. San Francisco, hybrid.

- Compensation: $250,000–$275,000 + benefits.

TO APPLY:

Share your resume. We care much more about what you've made than where you've worked, though; if this sounds like you, apply even if you don't check every box.

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