Percona

We're looking for a Software Engineering Manager to oversee the development and maintenance of our Percona Distribution for MongoDB by leading and supporting our MongoDB development team. Percona Distribution for MongoDB powers mission-critical workloads for companies around the globe. As the steward of this open-source distribution, you’ll help shape the future of MongoDB in high-performance, production environments.

We need someone who has a background in developing efficient processes, ensuring a high pace of delivery, and has a demonstrated track record of working across teams as well as with the broader open-source community to ensure that vital information is not lost as complex development requirements span multiple teams. At Percona, our people are our most vital asset, so you should be someone who looks to continually invest in helping them be better every day.

What You Will Do

• Hire and lead a globally distributed, empowered team of 8-10 software developers ranging from experienced to very senior.
• Partner closely with Product Management in collaboratively creating a roadmap that balances future needs, customer needs, and internal needs, and then help drive execution.
• You define success through on-time delivery, code quality, team satisfaction, and customer impact—driving outcomes, not just output.
• Develop people through coaching, mentoring, and management support, ensuring team health and individual growth.
• Promote the strategic use of AI tools to boost engineering velocity, improve code quality, and streamline workflows through thoughtful automation.
• Work with engineering teams, product managers, and others across team boundaries to maintain high levels of transparency, efficiency, collaboration and set context with the team so they are empowered and equipped to make great business and engineering informed decisions.
• Own the team’s outcomes—amplify what’s working, and proactively address areas for improvement.

What You Have Done

• 4+ years of experience leading and managing development teams.
• A cross-team facilitator: collaborating with other teams and figuring out how to get things running more smoothly.
• Adept at leading cross-functional teams in a matrixed/dotted-line reporting structure.
• High level of organization with a proven ability to prioritize, manage, budget, and deliver on time.
• Prior software development experience is a must! Most components of Percona.
• Distribution for Mongo are written in C/C++/Go, so knowledge of one or more of these programming languages is a big plus.
• Experience with deploying and running MongoDB and related components.
• Knowledgeable about open source software and development processes.
• Experience in project management with the ability to decompose complicated projects into simple tasks, estimates and manage risks.
• Self directed with the ability to operate independently without needing everyday input.
• Maturity to build relationships and operate across the organization (not locked to only operate in the vertical chain).

What Will Make You Stand Out

To truly stand out, you’re passionate about building and transforming high-performing engineering teams. You know how to turn output into outcomes, and can show how your leadership helped teams overcome challenges to ship real value.

Communication, Travel, and Remote Collaboration

As a globally distributed, remote-first company, Percona thrives on active communication and collaboration. While you'll be working from your home office, engaging openly and proactively with your team is absolutely crucial. We value lively discussions, the sharing of ideas, and transparent updates on your work. To foster a strong team environment, we expect consistent communication via our primary tools, including Slack, Zoom, and Jira. This ensures we stay connected, aligned, and support each other effectively, even across time zones. While travel is not a consistent requirement, there may be occasional opportunities for conferences or team meetups, where we come together in person to strengthen our bonds and strategic alignment.

Typical Day as a Software Engineering Manager at Percona:

Working Environment and Planning:

At Percona, we prioritize a structured work environment to support your focus as well as provide some degree of predictability to the departments that depend on us. We plan our work within defined timeframes and scopes, minimizing shifting priorities to allow you to concentrate on predefined tasks. Planning is a collaborative effort, involving team, Product, and customer insights. We're also dedicated to your growth: Fridays are designated no-meeting days, providing dedicated time for deep work, tackling challenging issues, or exploring new technologies.

• Morning (your schedule, your call): Start your day by checking Slack, email, and Jira for updates. Review sprint progress and triage any blockers, or open items that need your input. This is often your best window for deep work—whether that’s reviewing technical plans, refining process, or helping unblock a team member.
• Mid-Day: Collaborate with peers across engineering, product, and agile facilitation. Join syncs with your team to keep projects aligned and ensure focus on what matters. This is also a key time for cross-functional visibility—helping teams stay on track and connected.
• Afternoon: Focus on coaching—whether through 1:1s, peer reviews, or ad hoc conversations. Revisit metrics, process improvements, or follow-up items that need your leadership. Stay looped into external team developments that could impact your team’s delivery.

Key Points: Expect consistent communication via Slack, Zoom, and Jira. Active participation in the team's rituals is a must. Continuous learning and problem-solving are core to the role. Flexible work hours around potentially prescheduled team syncs or customer meetings. You’re not just managing delivery—you’re guiding it. We’re looking for someone who’s been there, done that, and can lead with both confidence and clarity. Bring your expertise and help us solve the right problems the right way.

Where You Will Work

Remote work from anywhere; however, a large portion of the broader team is located in Europe, so preference will be given to candidates +/-1 hour from CET.

Why Percona?

At Percona, we believe an open world is a better world. Our mission is to enable everyone to innovate freely, by providing the best open source database software, support, and services. We make databases and applications run better through a unique combination of expertise and open source software built with the community for you. Our technical teams are experts in MySQL, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, and MariaDB.

Percona is proud to be a remote-only and globally dispersed workforce – we have colleagues in more than 50 countries! We offer a collaborative, highly-engaged culture where your ideas are welcome and your voice is heard.

Our staff receives generous benefits including flexible work hours and various paid time off programs, all your equipment for your remote office, funds for career development (external training, certifications, conferences), ongoing connectivity allowances, and the opportunity to participate in our equity incentive plan. We also have benefits that support a healthy work/life balance such as The Percona Adventure Team, Work-from-Anywhere, FlowDays, FryDays, and overall flexibility. We also support being socially responsible through our PAVE volunteering program and Women Transforming Technology.

If you love the idea of working with a high-growth tech company that is one of the best in the business and known globally as a leader in the open-source database space, let’s talk!

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