Engineering Manager/Senior Engineering Manager - Instawork Robotics

Overview

Lead, mentor, and grow a team of 5+ engineers building the core video and data platform behind Instawork Robotics, supporting a platform that processes 50+ PB of data and 600K+ hours of video across multiple clouds.

What you'll do

• Lead, mentor, and develop a team of 5+ engineers, fostering a culture of ownership, collaboration, and continuous learning.
• Drive technical execution across the full software development lifecycle, from architecture and design to production.
• Partner closely with Product, Operations, Robotics, and Business teams to translate customer and business requirements into scalable technical solutions.
• Drive initiatives across Ops, QA, ML, and platform teams: keep context across workstreams, track progress, and make sure work lands.
• Stay hands-on (about 20% of your time) and contribute to architecture, design reviews, technical discussions, and complex engineering problems.
• Partner with ML teams on data quality, throughput, and the formats models train on.
• Build and scale engineering teams through proactive hiring, interviewing, onboarding, and talent development.
• Identify and develop strong engineering talent through regular feedback, coaching, and career development.
• Establish strong engineering practices around code quality, system reliability, observability, and operational excellence.
• Protect the team's focus: set priorities, push back on unplanned requests, and keep delivery commitments.
• Help shape the engineering culture and technical direction as Instawork Robotics continues to scale.
• Act as a technical pillar for the team, guiding mid- and senior-level engineers through code reviews, pair programming, and architectural discussions.

What you'll need

• 8+ years of software engineering experience, with 2+ years in engineering management or people leadership.
• Deep backend and distributed-systems background, with range across the stack, including frontend and ML infrastructure.
• Experience running Kubernetes in production, ideally across more than one cloud, with an eye on storage and compute cost.
• Proven experience managing and mentoring engineering teams and building high-performing teams from the ground up or at scale.
• Strong track record of hiring and building engineering teams, including sourcing, interviewing, and closing strong technical talent.
• Strong technical depth with the ability to engage in architecture and system design discussions and make sound technical decisions.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work across Engineering, Product, Operations, Robotics, and Business teams.
• An AI-first mindset and experience with data-intensive systems such as video, computer vision, or ML training data.
• Thrive in ambiguous, fast-paced, 0-1 environments; act like an owner, practice high-velocity decision-making, and ship product quickly without sacrificing quality.

Nice to have

• Robotics experience.

Details

• Location: Bengaluru, Karnataka, India.