Senior Engineering Manager, Messaging Platforms

The mission of The New York Times is to seek the truth and help people understand the world. That means independent journalism is at the heart of all we do as a company. It’s why we have a world-renowned newsroom that sends journalists to report on the ground from nearly 160 countries. It’s why we focus deeply on how our readers will experience our journalism, from print to audio to a world-class digital and app destination. And it’s why our business strategy centers on making journalism so good that it’s worth paying for. About the Role: The New York Times is looking for a Senior Engineering Manager to lead our Integrated Messaging team within the Messaging Platforms group. This is a full-stack engineering team responsible for the end-to-end experience of our direct-to-consumer messaging. We build both the high-throughput delivery engines that power native push notifications for millions of readers and the internal applications that allow our newsroom and marketing partners to orchestrate these communications. We are at an inflection point. As we evolve our messaging strategy, this team will lead the expansion into new channels like WhatsApp and SMS. As a Senior EM, you won't just manage a stable platform; you will design the team and the technology required to reach our audience wherever they are. You will oversee a diverse technical stack ranging from low-latency backend integrations to the user-facing tools that make our messaging platform powerful and intuitive. You will join an organization that values empathy, collaboration, transparency, and diversity. Responsibilities: Lead a Full-Stack Team: Manage a high-performing team of engineers (typically 7–12) working across the stack, from backend distributed systems to frontend management applications. Design Multi-Channel Growth: Guide the technical vision and roadmap for expanding our capabilities beyond native push into WhatsApp, SMS, or other emerging messaging channels. Balance Systems Applications: Oversee the development of high-availability delivery services alongside the internal tools and UIs that our editorial and product teams use to reach readers. High-Stakes Delivery: Ensure the reliability and sub-second delivery of push notifications. Strategic Partnership: Partner with Product, Design, and Data counterparts to prioritize investments that balance immediate operational needs with long-term platform modernization. Group Leadership: Contribute to the broader Messaging Platforms group by leading cross-team technical or cultural programs alongside the Group EM cadre. Champion Excellence: Represent the team in high-level technical discussions, identifying risks and making calculated tradeoffs between feature velocity and platform stability. Demonstrate support and understanding of our value of journalistic independence and a strong commitment to our mission to seek the truth and help people understand the world. You will report to the Director of Engineering for Messaging Platforms. Basic Qualifications: 3+ years of experience as an Engineering Manager, with a proven track record of managing high-functioning teams. Full-Stack Leadership for High-Availability Systems: Experience managing cross-disciplinary engineers (Frontend, Backend, DevOps) and overseeing mission-critical production operations. Demonstrated experience in driving transformation, leading teams through changes in technical strategy, organizational structure, or product direction. Strong People Development Skills: A history of coaching, mentoring, and growing the careers of engineers at various levels. Preferred Qualifications: Experience transitioning a team to an Agentic AI workflow, leveraging AI agents or LLM-based automation to enhance engineering productivity or system capabilities. Messaging Domain Expertise: Experience with push notification services (APNs, FCM), SMS gateways, or messaging APIs (e.g., WhatsApp Business API, Twilio). Modern Web Stack: Experience with ... (truncated, view full listing at source)