Engineering Manager of Managers, Document Databases

About Stripe

Stripe is a financial infrastructure platform for businesses. Millions of companies-from the world’s largest enterprises to the most ambitious startups-use Stripe to accept payments, grow their revenue, and accelerate new business opportunities. Our mission is to increase the GDP of the internet. That means you have an unprecedented opportunity to put the global economy within everyone’s reach while doing the most important work of your career.

About the Team

The Document Databases group owns the bedrock of Stripe: our flagship, general-purpose, online transactional storage layer. We don't just "run" databases; we build a Platform-as-a-Product that abstracts the complexity of persistence for thousands of Stripe engineers.

As the Head of this organization, you will lead a globally distributed team of 50–60 engineers and managers responsible for a system serving millions of requests per second (RPS) with 99.999%+ availability. Your mandate is to evolve this infrastructure from managed clusters into a fully autonomous, self-service, globally-distributed Database-as-a-Service.

The Impact You’ll Have

As a Manager of Managers, you are expected to see problems others don't and rally people to independently create solutions. You will move beyond day-to-day management to act as an industry leader, effectively advocating for your organization's mission, values, and impact.

• Architect the Org & Culture: Design and scale a high-leverage org structure. You will define what "Elite Engineering" looks like, setting the bar for craftsmanship and operational rigor serving as a blueprint for Stripe infrastructure.

• Vision and Strategy: Define the scope, vision, and goals for your organization with little or no guidance from your manager. You will anticipate industry trends and use them to influence Stripe's long-range plans, setting direction on a multi-year timeframe for Stripe’s online storage layer.

• Drive Operational Excellence: You will instill a culture of rigorous thinking and meticulous craftsmanship, ensuring our infrastructure remains proactive and resilient as Stripe’s business demands evolve.

• Bridge Engineering & Business: You will collaborate with cross-functional leaders to align deep engineering needs with global business growth forecasts.

• Build the Future Team: Proactively invest in the development of the organization and its people at all levels. You will obsess over talent, hiring and coaching other managers to elevate the skills of the leadership team.

Who You Are

We are looking for a visionary leader who thrives on operating Tier0 infrastructure and building world-class teams. You should be equally comfortable in high-level strategic conversations and deep-diving into database internals.

Minimum Requirements:

• Proven Leadership: Minimum 10 years of experience in a technical leadership role; overseeing strategic projects, including minimum 3 years of Manager of Manager experience.

• Systems Expertise: A deep technical background in distributed systems and experience operating Tier0 infrastructure at massive scale.

• Product Mindset: Ability to bridge deep engineering needs with global business growth forecasts and product strategy, specifically building abstractions that empower thousands of other developers.

• Strategic Navigator: Experience managing through ambiguity and making critical trade-offs between reliability, efficiency, and long-term architectural health.

• Curiosity and Humility: A deep curiosity about the "nuts-and-bolts" of the business (e.g., global money movement) combined with the humility to continue learning and growing as a leader

• Communication: Exceptional written and verbal communication skills.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Scale and Infrastructure: Successfully shipped and operated critical infrastructure (database internals or related field) with significant responsibility over funds and/or critical data

• Strategic Ambiguity: Ability to navigate complex, high-impact work where you must define your own scope and vision

• Cross-Functional Influence: A track record of getting other teams on board with your vision to support execution in a way that benefits the broader company

• Global Teams: Experience managing globally distributed teams across different timezones

In-office expectations

In-Office: Stripe is a "Live" culture. You will be expected to spend at least 50% of your time in your local hub to foster high-bandwidth, in-person collaboration.