Engineering Manager, Core Platform | Remote | Europe

About the role

Build and lead one of two Core Platform teams that power n8n's workflow engine and frontend platform, enabling product engineers to ship confidently across cloud and self-hosted deployments. You'll lead a technically strong platform team through foundational backend and frontend challenges while creating clarity, momentum, and a high bar for engineering quality.

What you'll do

• Lead, coach, and develop engineers working on the foundational systems that product teams and the community depend on.
• Create a high-trust environment where engineers can make strong technical decisions, grow in ownership, and do their best work together.
• Guide the team's work across backend platform foundations such as durable workflow execution, orchestration, queue/task distribution, state handling, and data architecture.
• Support the evolution of frontend platform foundations including canvas architecture, real-time collaboration, rendering performance, and frontend developer experience.
• Partner closely with Product, Design, Engineering, and other stakeholders to align platform priorities with product and business outcomes.
• Turn complex platform problems into clear plans, helping the team balance speed, quality, reliability, and long-term architecture.
• Mentor engineers, challenge technical decisions thoughtfully, and maintain a high bar for engineering quality across foundational systems.

What you'll need

• First-line Engineering Manager experience for at least 2 years with direct leadership of engineers in a growing product or platform organization.
• Strong people leadership: coaching, feedback, career growth support, and ability to handle hard conversations with empathy and accountability.
• Platform and systems thinking with deep understanding of correctness, reliability, trade-offs, and long-term maintainability in foundational systems.
• Hands-on software engineering background with ability to mentor engineers and confidently assess technical trade-offs.
• Technical depth in modern software systems; ability to go deep into code or technical details without becoming the critical path.
• Cross-functional alignment skills to collaborate effectively with Product, Design, and engineering stakeholders.
• Composure in fast-moving environments with ability to help teams stay focused, confident, and effective as priorities evolve.
• High-growth SaaS experience with knowledge of scaling teams, systems, and ways of working.

Nice to have

• TypeScript / Node.js familiarity or JavaScript experience.
• Workflow, orchestration, or developer tools experience.
• Open-source contribution or maintenance experience.
• Large-scale SaaS exposure with meaningful scale or reliability requirements.
• Frontend platform experience with complex systems such as canvas-based products or collaborative applications.
• Backend platform experience with distributed systems, event-driven patterns, or durable execution patterns.

What they offer

• Lead a core platform team shaping the future of automation in an AI-native company.
• Work in a remote-first, fast-growing engineering organization.
• Visa sponsorship available to Germany.