At Crisis Text Line, our mission is to promote mental well-being for people wherever they are. Our technology powers life-saving crisis support across the U.S. and around the world, connecting people to trained counselors when they need help most.
Our Build department brings together engineering, product, and design to create the most trusted and effective crisis care platform in the industry. Together, we are building technology that enables safe, reliable crisis conversations, empowers global affiliates to operate support services, and advances a services- and API-first architecture that integrates data and predictive insights across the platform.
The RoleWe are seeking an exceptional Senior Engineering Manager to lead the Conversation Applications Team (CAT) — the team responsible for the systems that power real-time crisis conversations.
This leader will guide the evolution of our Crisis Care Platform, helping transition legacy PHP services to Go-based systems, while strengthening our API-first architecture, platform reliability, observability, and engineering delivery practices.
The role combines architectural thinking with strong people leadership, mentoring a high-performing engineering team and partnering closely with Product, Clinical, Data, and Infrastructure teams to build systems that enable life-saving support at scale.
ResponsibilitiesTechnical Leadership- Lead the modernization of core platform services (PHP → Go), defining service boundaries, architectural patterns, and dependency sequencing across routing, counselor tools, and shared services.
- Standardize CI/CD, deployments, observability, logging, and telemetry across AWS- and Go-based environments to enable reliable, predictable operations.
- Establish SLAs, incident management practices, performance baselines, and monitoring frameworks to strengthen system resilience, reliability, and error visibility.
- Drive platform maturity from ~2/5 to ~4/5 by implementing engineering standards, documentation patterns, and consistent service quality across the squad.
- Own the technology strategy and develop a plan to modernize core platform services (PHP → Go), defining service boundaries, architectural patterns, and dependency sequencing across the CTL platform, volunteer management lifecycle, and other core services.
- Own the execution and delivery of client-facing features by leading an engineering team committed to quality, velocity, and customer impact.
- Own the technology strategy and develop a plan to modernize core platform services (PHP → Go), defining service boundaries, architectural patterns, and dependency sequencing across the CTL platform, volunteer management lifecycle, and other core services.
- Partner with Product, Developer Platform, DevOps/SRE, and Security to align on shared infrastructure, governance, roadmap priorities, and technical dependencies.
- Collaborate with Data Engineering, Research, and Analytics to ensure cross-service reliability, performant data flows, and architectural alignment across the Build department.
Leadership & Team Development
- Lead and mentor a team of 6–8 engineers, supporting growth in architectural thinking, system ownership, delivery discipline, and engineering excellence.
- Set clear expectations, provide thoughtful and actionable feedback, and cultivate a culture of reliability, autonomy, innovation, and strong documentation practices.
- Serve as a coaching-focused, people-first leader who brings structure, clarity, and calm to complex platform and migration work.
- Communicate with empathy while maintaining high standards, thriving in ambiguity, and modeling the team’s expected documentation, reliability, and engineering discipline.
Qualifications
Required
- 5+ years building and operating backend or platform systems in production
- 3+ years of engineering management leading teams and delivering complex initiatives
- Experience modernizing legacy systems and leading architectural migrations (e.g., PHP → Go, monolith → services)
- Strong knowledge of distributed systems, API-first architecture, and service design
- Experience with AWS, Terraform, CI/CD pipelines, GraphQL, and relational databases
- Ability to guide teams on AWS reliability, security, and cost best practices
- Experience establishing automated testing practices (unit, integration, contract, and end-to-end testing)
- Experience improving system reliability and observability (logging, monitoring, telemetry, performance tuning)
- Strong planning, prioritization, and execution in sprint-based development environments
Preferred
- Architectural familiarity with Go, PHP, and React (hands-on coding not required).
- Experience leading platform modernization efforts in complex or mission-critical environments.
- Ability to balance innovation, reliability, and technical debt management in architectural decision-making.
Leadership Fit
- Coaching-oriented, people-first engineering leader
- Brings clarity, structure, and strong delivery discipline
- Empowers engineers with ownership while maintaining high standards for reliability and quality
- Communicates effectively across technical and cross-functional partners
- Balances speed, reliability, and technical debt in decision-making
- Motivated by building teams and technology that advance Crisis Text Line’s mission
Reliable High-Speed Internet Required: Must have a stable high-speed internet connection to support seamless remote collaboration, virtual meetings, online job tasks, etc.
The full salary range for this position, across all United States geographies, is $135,520 to $170,000 The upper portion of the salary range is typically reserved for existing employees who demonstrate strong performance over time. Starting salary will vary by location, qualifications, and prior experience; during the interview process, candidates will learn the starting salary range applicable for their location. We pay competitively in the tech-forward nonprofit space and offer a robust benefits package.
Benefits & Well-Being
Crisis Text Line recognizes that we are all unique human beings with unique life circumstances, and our benefits package aims to be as flexible as possible to support your needs as you work to promote mental well-being for people, wherever they are. Our benefits package is thoughtfully designed using an equity lens, with input from our team and from industry best practices.
Highlights include:
- Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision options that prioritize accessibility and financial peace of mind
- Employer-funded HSA contributions
- Generous PTO, sick time, and 19 paid holidays with a winter break
- 12 weeks of fully paid parental leave after 26 consecutive weeks of service
- Monthly internet and mental health stipends
- Annual Wellness Stipend
- Home office and professional development stipends
- 403(b) retirement plan with employer contribution
- Sabbatical after 3 years of service
Benefits are for U.S.-based employees; international benefits may vary.
Only candidates in the following states will be eligible for employment: CA, CO, CT, FL, GA, IL, IN, MD, MA, MI, NJ, NM, NY, NC, PA, TN, TX, UT, VA, WA
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Top Skills
What We Do
Millions of people are quietly suffering every day. They quietly struggle with depression, anxiety, eating disorders, bullying, suicidal thoughts, and more. Crisis Text Line provides free, 24/7 support for people in crisis in the United States via a medium people already use and trust: text. And we use insights from our work to develop and share innovations in prevention, treatment, and long-term care.
Crisis Text Line trains volunteers (like you!) to support people in crisis. With over 70 million crisis messages processed to date, the org is growing quickly, and so is the need.
Crisis Text Line is a not-for-profit tech start-up, born from the rib of DoSomething.org.
