Engineering Manager, API Client - San Francisco

The Opportunity

The API client is the core beating heart of the Postman product experience. It is what many users perceive as the entirety of Postman (although there is so much more!), and we have ambitious goals in 2024 and beyond about delighting developers more with the API client as well as simplifying this central product experience. We have three thematic goals on API client in 2024 that we will achieve, and hopefully, you will join to make us even more successful in these goals:

1. Delight the Developer. The developer is critical to the success of Postman, and we intend to get closer to them, both in GitHub with quick replies and tight feedback loops, but even more importantly with our feature delivery, addressing long-standing requests and continuing to differentiate on our core product experience.
2. Simplify request sending and debugging. Postman has grown into an incredibly powerful tool, but great tools are simple for power users and new users alike. We’ll need to pare down this experience to the essentials and progressively disclose complexity to powerful features when users need them, and no sooner.
3. Build the multi-protocol future. We have spent the last few years building new request protocols (like GraphQL, gRPC, and Websockets), and in 2024 we’ll more tightly integrate these protocols into the full Postman experience. 

We have built a ubiquitous, loved developer product and API client is a crucial piece of the broader Postman experience. If you’re curious, see why I joined and hear about my experience in joining the rocket ship of an opportunity that is Postman.

PS: If you’d like to know more about my leadership style, give this a once over. Hopefully we’re compatible because we will be working together a whole heck of a lot.

Who are we

Postman is the world’s leading API platform, used by more than 30 million developers and 500,000 organizations, including 98% of the Fortune 500. Postman is helping developers and professionals across the globe build the API-first world by simplifying each step of the API lifecycle and streamlining collaboration—enabling users to create better APIs, faster.

The company is headquartered in San Francisco and has an office in Bangalore, where it was founded. Postman is privately held, with funding from Battery Ventures, BOND, Coatue, CRV, Insight Partners, and Nexus Venture Partners. Learn more at postman.com or connect with Postman on X (formerly Twitter) via @getpostman.

P.S: We highly recommend reading The "API-First World" graphic novel to understand the bigger picture and our vision at Postman.

What you’ll do

To achieve our goals, we’ll need a solid engineering manager who makes good decisions and focuses the team on execution. To quote Frank Slootman (former Snowflake CEO):

“Strategy is overrated and execution is severely underrated. Mostly all companies plan well and mostly all companies fail at execution. Make execution the king in your company.”

– Frank Slootman, Amp it Up

Execution is key on the API client team. We’ll need someone who relentlessly focuses the team on execution. We’ll progress and continuously improve towards achieving our goals and metrics and most importantly we’ll deliver an increasingly excellent product experience to developers using Postman. You should expect to:

• Lead an engineering team to build, iterate, and improve upon a core product in the Postman experience in API client
• Work closely with product and design to develop and execute on engineering roadmaps
• Collaborate on engineering processes to streamline execution across multiple teams within API client
• Collaborate on team processes to streamline collaboration across US and India team members
• Recruit and hire engineers to work on the product
• Establish processes and norms for working closely with developers in GitHub and establish community health metrics

About you

Must have:

• 2+ years of people management experience.
• Track record of managing teams that deliver. Impressive portfolio of projects launched.
• Excellent communication skills. We’re a remote-first team and we’re going to be moving fast together. Good communication is key.
• You must be a builder. While we don’t expect you to be hands-on coding, we expect you to be regularly using the product and able to speak the same language as the team building the tool.
• Detail oriented. We have to care about the details, and while we don’t expect you to be a designer, you need to care about the product experience that our teams are shipping.
• Customer obsession. As we are a core product with years of muscle memory, we need a leader who is able and willing to leverage the voice of the customer to expedite decision making, develop conviction, and most importantly delight our user.
• Experience managing engineering teams that deliver impactful results as quickly as possible but do so safely and with appropriate guard rails around a mature product experience that our users depend upon us to just work
• Based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Nice-to-have:

• Experience working with or using full-stack JavaScript / TypeScript
• Experience working on B2B product and/or developer tools.

Our values

At Postman, we create with the same curiosity that we see in our users. We value transparency & honest communication about not only successes, but also failures. In our work, we focus on specific goals that add up to a larger vision. Our inclusive work culture ensures that everyone is valued equally as important pieces of our final product. We are dedicated to delivering the best products we can.

What else?

If the role is based in the greater San Francisco area, and the reasonably estimated salary for this role ranges from $216,750 to $255,451, plus a competitive equity package. Actual compensation is based on the candidate's skills, qualifications, and experience. In addition to our pay-on-performance philosophy, we offer a comprehensive set of benefits, including full medical coverage, flexible PTO, wellness reimbursement, and a monthly lunch stipend. Salaries will vary outside of the listed metropolitan areas & the U.S.

Equal opportunity

Postman is an Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender perception or identity, national origin, age, marital status, protected veteran status, or disability status. Headhunters and recruitment agencies may not submit resumes/CVs through this website or directly to managers. Postman does not accept unsolicited headhunter and agency resumes. Postman will not pay fees to any third-party agency or company that does not have a signed agreement with Postman.