Software Engineering Manager

At Yext, Product Engineering builds and evolves the technology behind our products and services. We’re looking for engineering managers who want to lead strong teams, solve meaningful technical problems, and help shape what we build next.

We work in an agile environment with two-week sprints and regular demos that keep teams aligned and give engineers clear visibility into the impact of their work. As an engineering manager, you’ll partner closely with Product and Engineering leaders to set direction, turn broader priorities into actionable plans, and create an environment where engineers can do their best work and continue to grow.

We are looking for an engineering manager to join the Knowledge Graph team, which builds and maintains the systems that turn customer information into a connected, usable source of truth. The team develops the core infrastructure, APIs, and workflows that help brands model, manage, and connect their knowledge across products and experiences.

The work involves challenging engineering problems, including representing complex real-world entities, processing large volumes of changing data, building reliable distributed systems, and creating interfaces that allow other teams to build confidently on top of the graph. This is an opportunity for engineers who enjoy foundational technology, thoughtful data modeling and system design, and seeing their work enable a wide range of customer experiences.

This role is based in our New York City office in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, where in-person collaboration plays an important part in how our teams work, learn, and build relationships. We’re looking for people who genuinely value that environment and are comfortable coming into the office at least three days per week. At the same time, we don’t prescribe specific in-office days and want employees to have the flexibility to handle personal needs without disrupting their work or team collaboration.

What You’ll Do 

• Lead and develop a team of software engineers, providing regular coaching, actionable feedback, and support for their career growth
• Partner with Product and Engineering leadership to translate product priorities and longer-term goals into clear, achievable plans for the team
• Own the team’s execution and delivery, establishing priorities, breaking larger initiatives into manageable work, and maintaining a sustainable development cadence
• Create clarity for the team by resolving ambiguity, removing blockers, managing competing priorities, and protecting engineers from unnecessary organizational churn and distractions
• Maintain a strong technical understanding of the team’s systems and provide guidance on architecture, design, implementation, and technical tradeoffs
• Foster a high bar for engineering quality through thoughtful design discussions, code reviews, testing, operational readiness, and continuous improvement
• Ensure the team is prepared to respond effectively to production incidents, providing leadership and coordination during incidents and driving meaningful follow-up afterward
• Build an environment where engineers take ownership, collaborate effectively, learn from one another, and feel comfortable raising concerns and challenging assumptions
• Collaborate across Product Engineering and with partners throughout the company to coordinate dependencies, resolve issues, and deliver shared initiatives
• Recruit and hire talented engineers, actively participate in the interview process, and build an effective onboarding experience for new team members
• Identify opportunities to improve the team’s systems, processes, and ways of working, and help turn those opportunities into meaningful change
• Model thoughtful use of AI-assisted development tools and help engineers incorporate AI effectively throughout design, research, implementation, testing, debugging, and code review
• Maintain a high-quality bar for AI-assisted work by ensuring engineers understand and validate generated output and remain accountable for its correctness, security, maintainability, and alignment with engineering standards
• Encourage experimentation with new AI capabilities and workflows, share successful approaches across the team, and help identify opportunities where AI can meaningfully improve engineering effectiveness

What You Have 

• A BA/BS in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent college-level education 
• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience
• 1+ years of team or technical leadership
• Experience coaching engineers, providing direct and constructive feedback, and supporting their professional development
• Experience translating product or business priorities into technical plans and driving a team toward successful delivery
• The ability to stay technically engaged enough to guide design decisions, evaluate tradeoffs, and help engineers work through difficult problems
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, including the ability to create clarity when priorities or requirements are ambiguous
• A track record of building healthy, effective engineering teams while holding a high bar for quality and accountability
• Experience using AI-assisted development tools and the ability to evaluate their output critically as part of a responsible engineering workflow
• Sound judgment regarding data privacy, intellectual property, security, and the appropriate use of confidential information when working with AI tools
• Strong technical judgment and a foundation in software architecture, design, data structures, and algorithms
• Fluency with Java, Go, C++, Python, or a similar programming language (we code primarily in Java and Go)
• Experience recruiting, interviewing, and onboarding software engineers
• Openness to new technologies, new ways of working, and creative solutions
• Comfort working in a fast-paced environment

#LI-JB1