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Jaya, our CTO, has nine people reporting straight to her in Platforms and zero managers underneath. That's the gap.
Platforms is Samba's shared-services org - infra, cloud, and data platforms - built for the transformation the company's mid-way through: converting exciting semi-monolithic applications into completely new architecture supporting agentic solutions.
Nobody else owns this. Every product team builds on what Platforms ships.
Sneak peek: in the next six months this splits further. You'd start as frontline manager for the Sama Data Platform and Cloud team. Once Platforms hires its VP, the org resettles around two managers and two architects reporting in above you, across what's becoming a 16-18 person department.
What you'd actually do
Own your department's roadmap - not execute someone else's. Decide where to invest, run technology face-offs, and make the case for why. You'd manage day-to-day for a small team now, and you need to be able to pick up a help-desk-level ticket yourself when it counts - this isn't a hire who stays a layer above the work.
The harder part is everyone outside your team. Platforms doesn't own a product, it owns the infrastructure every product team is forced to build on - so you'll hear from roughly 80 people with opinions about why it's not good enough, and you need to convince them to adopt what you're building instead of just absorbing the complaints.
What you need to already be good at
Technical enough to pass our architecture challenge - we're not asking for architect-level depth, but you need to be credible in the room, not just managing it.
AWS, but we also have our own data center, and GCP
Kubernetes
Terraform and Python
Comfortable owning a roadmap and making technical calls, not just running standups.
A real communicator - this job is cross-team persuasion as much as it is management.
You want the roadmap handed to you - there isn't one yet, you're building it
You need to be a "professional manager" who doesn't get hands-on. Our CTO own words: "we're too small to just have professional managers"
You get defensive instead of curious when 80 people are telling you your infrastructure isn't working for them
We're specifically not looking for someone with 3-6 years of straight people-management experience. We'd rather hire someone technical who wants to grow into this - startup, small-team, or adjacent-industry background over big-tech-with-a-roadmap-already-built. We'll train you into the management side alongside Talent.
Bonus points
Background in a startup or small, fast-moving team · comfortable being the most senior technical voice in the room without being the most senior architect · experience translating "our infra sucks" complaints into an actual roadmap decision
Not for you if
How we judge you, and how it goes
Same five things every Samba hire is scored on: Determined yet Resilient, Naturally Curious, Low Ego, Self-aware, Results Oriented.
Why now
Skills Required
- Technical credibility sufficient to pass an architecture challenge
- Experience with AWS
- Experience with GCP
- Experience with Kubernetes
- Experience with Terraform
- Experience with Python
- Ability to own a technical roadmap and make technical decisions
- Strong communication and cross-team persuasion skills
- Hands-on technical capability, including handling help-desk-level issues
- Startup or small, fast-moving team background
- Ability to translate infrastructure feedback into roadmap decisions
What We Do
Television remains a vibrant cultural influence and an essential source of entertainment and information worldwide. Tremendous growth in content choices, and viewing platforms that allow us to watch anything, anytime, on any screen, has actually made it harder for viewers to discover and keep up with all the great programming available. It’s also more competitive for content providers to keep your attention, and for marketers to make strong, measurable connections with their target consumers. Technology that improves the viewing experience, enables content discovery, and addresses audience fragmentation across screens will strengthen television’s business model and relevance to consumers. Data is at the center of any solution to make TV better. Samba TV's technology is built into Smart TVs and easily maps to smart phones and tablets. By recognizing what's on screen, Samba TV learns what viewers like and using machine learning algorithms, enables discovery of shows and actors in a whole new way. Likewise, our data and measurement products are transforming the way stakeholders across the media landscape are thinking about their business. Given the dramatic growth in streaming services, connected devices, time-shifting, and multi-screen viewership, our data products solve real problems and create a meaningful competitive advantage for our clients.
