Senior R&D Team Leader - Assets Core

As the Senior Team Leader of the Assets Core team, you will lead the engine room behind Cloudinary’s most critical media capabilities. This team is responsible for the foundational services - Permissions, intuitive UX navigation, advanced Search & Discoverability, and AI-driven analysis—that define how our customers interact with and derive value from their media assets at scale.You will be the guardian of our core asset infrastructure, driving high-performance development and sophisticated AI integrations, while leading a talented cross-functional team toward a culture of technical excellence and massive impact.

What You’ll Do:
• The “Power Couple” Partnership: Partner closely with a dedicated Product Manager to own the “What” and the “How.” Together, you are fully accountable for the team’s roadmap, the evolution of our asset management features, and the long-term vision of our core platform.

• Elevate the Standard: Inherit an existing team and build it into a high-performing engine. You will set the bar for “what good looks like,” coaching engineers and ensuring the team is constantly pushing the boundaries of performance and usability.

• Architectural Oversight: Guide the team through complex architectural challenges, particularly in search indexing and data enrichment. While you won’t be coding daily, you will be “in the weeds” with your developers, challenging designs, reviewing code, and ensuring our systems are scalable, responsive, and secure.

• R&D Influencer: Act as a leading voice beyond your team. You will collaborate with the Group Architect and peer TLs to ensure our Asset services seamlessly integrate across the entire Cloudinary ecosystem, serving as a consultant for other teams’ asset-related needs.

• The Art of “No”: Manage a high volume of requests from across the organization (UX, Product, CS). You will use your exceptional communication skills to prioritize ruthlessly, balancing the need for rapid feature delivery with the necessity of maintaining a robust, stable, and highly performant platform.

What You Bring:
• Proven Leadership: You have successfully led engineering teams in fast-paced, high-growth environments for at least 8 years. You know how to build a culture of ownership and are not afraid to lead through change.

• Deep Technical Roots: You are a “developer at heart” with a strong background in building complex backend services. You can hold your own in deep-dive architectural discussions regarding search platforms, data processing pipelines, or scalable APIs.

• Product-Minded Engineer: You understand that "Assets Core" is about more than just data—it’s about the UX. You have a keen eye for how backend performance translates to a seamless user experience and can champion usability in every architectural decision.

• AI-Driven Innovation: You are ready to push the boundaries of AI integration. Whether it’s AI-vision, autotagging, or smart clustering, you are expected to be driving the adoption of AI to turn raw assets into actionable intelligence.

• Execution Mindset: You are a “closer.” You have a track record of taking complex, data-intensive projects and driving them to a successful, high-quality delivery, ensuring that our core services remain the best in the market.

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