Software Engineering Manager

Software Engineering Manager – Change Management

Location: Pune, India - Hybrid | Full-Time

Zendesk is building a next-generation IT Service Management (ITSM) platform to help organizations streamline internal operations, modernize IT workflows, and enhance service delivery across the enterprise. We are seeking a highly motivated and experienced Engineering Manager to lead our new Change Management team in Pune.

This team is responsible for designing, building, and evolving the core change request, approval, and orchestration framework that drives IT process reliability and compliance for our enterprise customers. You will be responsible for the health of the team, the quality of its delivery, and aligning its technical roadmap with our broader ITSM strategy. If you are a technical leader who thrives on mentoring engineers, driving execution, and ensuring the delivery of mission-critical, high-quality software, we want to talk to you.

• Lead and mentor a team of 5–8 Software Engineers (from Software Engineer to Staff level), fostering a collaborative, inclusive, and high-performance culture.

• Be responsible for the career development, growth, and performance management of your direct reports, providing regular coaching, feedback, and support.

• Drive the hiring strategy for the team, including sourcing, interviewing, and closing top engineering talent.

• Promote operational excellence by encouraging technical discussions, robust code reviews, and adoption of best practices.

• Manage competing priorities and resolve conflicts to maintain team focus and morale.

• Work closely with the Staff Software Engineer to translate the technical vision and architectural strategy into actionable, time-boxed execution plans.

• Own the team's project delivery commitments, ensuring features are shipped on time, with high quality, and meet scalability and performance requirements.

• Partner with Product Managers to align engineering efforts with business objectives, manage project scope, and set clear expectations for deliverables.

• Ensure the team is following Agile/Scrum methodologies and continually look for ways to improve development processes and increase team efficiency.

• Be a hands-on technical leader when needed, participating in high-level system design reviews, architectural decision-making, and deep technical problem-solving.

• Serve as the primary point of contact for the team, communicating status, risks, and dependencies to senior leadership and cross-functional partners (other Engineering teams, PM, Design, SRE).

• Actively collaborate with global engineering teams to ensure architectural alignment and successful integration across the Zendesk platform.

• Champion the customer experience, ensuring the features delivered are scalable, reliable, and solve real-world problems for enterprise IT teams.

• Manage the team’s on-call rotation and production incident response process, driving post-mortem reviews and ensuring follow-through on resulting action items.

• 5+ years of experience in software engineering, with 3+ years of experience managing and leading a team of software engineers.

• Demonstrated ability to coach and mentor engineers across different experience levels, from junior to senior.

• Strong technical background with hands-on experience in backend development (e.g., Ruby on Rails, Java, Python) and API design (GraphQL/REST).

• Proven track record of successfully shipping complex, large-scale enterprise software products in a fast-paced environment.

• Deep familiarity with distributed systems, microservices architecture, and cloud environments (AWS preferred).

• Strong understanding of SDLC, Agile methodologies, and a commitment to quality through automated testing and CI/CD practices.

• Exceptional communication skills (written and verbal), with the ability to articulate complex technical and delivery issues clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.

• Experience in performance management, hiring, and retention of high-performing engineering talent.

• Prior experience in the IT Service Management (ITSM) domain or building enterprise-grade workflow automation/orchestration engines.

• Hands-on experience with modern frontend frameworks (e.g., React, TypeScript).

• Experience managing engineering teams in a geographically distributed or multi-site organizational structure.

• Experience with multi-tenant SaaS architectures and ensuring security, performance, and compliance at scale.

• Backend: Ruby, Ruby on Rails, MySQL

• Frontend: JavaScript, TypeScript, React, Redux, GraphQL

• DevOps & Monitoring: DataDog, CI/CD tools

• Cloud & Infrastructure: AWS, Kubernetes

• Own your impact: Lead a mission-critical team building the future of IT service management.

• Be a force multiplier: Directly influence the careers and technical output of talented engineers.

• Strategic visibility: Work directly with senior leadership to set the technical and organizational direction for the ITSM platform.

• Grow your career: Access to leadership development, mentorship, and a global community of engineering leaders.

Lead the way in Change Management. We’d love to hear from you.

Hybrid: In this role, our hybrid experience is designed at the team level to give you a rich onsite experience packed with connection, collaboration, learning, and celebration - while also giving you flexibility to work remotely for part of the week. This role must attend our local office for part of the week. The specific in-office schedule is to be determined by the hiring manager.

Zendesk software was built to bring a sense of calm to the chaotic world of customer service. Today we power billions of conversations with brands you know and love.

Zendesk believes in offering our people a fulfilling and inclusive experience. Our hybrid way of working, enables us to purposefully come together in person, at one of our many Zendesk offices around the world, to connect, collaborate and learn whilst also giving our people the flexibility to work remotely for part of the week.

Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer, and we’re proud of our ongoing efforts to foster global diversity, equity, & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment and employees at Zendesk are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We are an AA/EEO/Veterans/Disabled employer. If you are based in the United States and would like more information about your EEO rights under the law, please click here.

Zendesk endeavors to make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans pursuant to applicable federal and state law. If you are an individual with a disability and require a reasonable accommodation to submit this application, complete any pre-employment testing, or otherwise participate in the employee selection process, please send an e-mail to [email protected] with your specific accommodation request.

Please note that Zendesk can only hire candidates who are physically located and plan to work from Karnataka or Maharashtra. Please refer to the location posted on the requisition for where this role is based.

Hybrid: In this role, our hybrid experience is designed at the team level to give you a rich onsite experience packed with connection, collaboration, learning, and celebration - while also giving you flexibility to work remotely for part of the week. This role must attend our local office for part of the week. The specific in-office schedule is to be determined by the hiring manager.

The intelligent heart of customer experience

Zendesk software was built to bring a sense of calm to the chaotic world of customer service. Today we power billions of conversations with brands you know and love.

Zendesk believes in offering our people a fulfilling and inclusive experience. Our hybrid way of working, enables us to purposefully come together in person, at one of our many Zendesk offices around the world, to connect, collaborate and learn whilst also giving our people the flexibility to work remotely for part of the week.

As part of our commitment to fairness and transparency, we inform all applicants that artificial intelligence (AI) or automated decision systems may be used to screen or evaluate applications for this position, in accordance with Company guidelines and applicable law.

Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer, and we’re proud of our ongoing efforts to foster global diversity, equity, & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment and employees at Zendesk are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We are an AA/EEO/Veterans/Disabled employer. If you are based in the United States and would like more information about your EEO rights under the law, please click here.

Zendesk endeavors to make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans pursuant to applicable federal and state law. If you are an individual with a disability and require a reasonable accommodation to submit this application, complete any pre-employment testing, or otherwise participate in the employee selection process, please send an e-mail to [email protected] with your specific accommodation request.