Manager, Engineering

Life at Plume At Plume, we believe that technology isn't about moving faster, it's about making life’s moments better. Which is why we’ve built the world's first, and only, open and hardware-independent service delivery platform for smart homes, small businesses, enterprises, and beyond. Our SaaS platform uses WiFi, advanced AI, and machine learning to create the future of connected spaces—and human experiences—at massive scale. We now deliver services to over 60 million locations globally and have managed over 3 billion devices on our platform. We’re expanding rapidly, pioneering a new category, and we achieved our Series F funding in just four years. Our customers include many of the world's largest Internet Service Providers (ISPs) who look to Plume to help them evolve their smart home offerings while gleaning insights from their own data. With a bias for action and a love for being trailblazers, the team at Plume embodies a combination of relentless curiosity and imaginative innovation. We challenge ourselves to think in ways that other companies don't, work to do what should be done (rather than what can), and if we can’t do it exceptionally well, we don’t do it. It’s how we've assembled a team of world-class builders, thinkers, and doers. And it’s how we’re reinventing what’s possible every day. This is a work-from-office / In-Office role based in our Hyderabad, India location. Plume is looking for a hands-on engineering leader to build and run a product/feature team that owns the heart of our connectivity product: Wi-Fi optimization, standards-based device management over TR-369 (USP) and TR-181, device provisioning and lifecycle, and the cloud-based controller that orchestrates all of it across WAN and LAN. You will own the roadmap, the architecture and the people for a team of 10-20 engineers spanning embedded, cloud and networking disciplines and you will still be close enough to the code to review a design, debug a customer escalation, and make the hard technical call yourself. Your team's software runs on tens of millions of live gateways and access points at some of the world's largest ISPs, so the decisions you make are felt at real scale, by real subscribers, immediately. You will work shoulder to shoulder with Product Management, cloud and firmware teams across three continents, and directly with ISP customers. If you want the ownership of a founding team leader with the leverage of an established platform, this is that role. What You'll Do: Lead the team • Build, lead and grow a team of 8–12 engineers in Hyderabad — hire, onboard, coach, run 1:1s, set expectations and own performance and career development • Establish the engineering culture for a growing site: high standards on design review, code quality, testing and on-call discipline • Grow senior engineers into technical leaders and create clear paths for the people who don't want to manage • Partner with recruiting to raise the bar on hiring, and represent Plume credibly to strong candidates Own the outcome • Own end-to-end delivery for your feature area: planning, prioritisation, execution, quality and operational health in production • Translate product strategy with Product Management into a technical roadmap, then hold the team to it — including the trade-offs about what not to build • Drive cross-team execution with cloud, firmware, data and QA groups across multiple time zones • Represent your area in escalations and in front of ISP customers; understand their problems and get them surgically solved Stay Technical • Set architectural direction for Wi-Fi optimization, device provisioning and lifecycle management, the cloud controller, and WAN/LAN feature delivery • Lead design reviews, write and review code where it matters most, and remain the person who can go deep on a hard bug • Own the TR-369 (USP) and TR-181 data model strategy — how the platform is modelled, versioned and evolved across a multi-vendor device fleet • Drive scale, latency and reliability decisions for a system managing tens of millions of devices • Represent Plume in external forums such as the Broadband Forum, RDK-B, prpl Foundation and the Wi-Fi Alliance What You'll Bring: • 12+ years of software engineering experience, including 3+ years directly managing or formally leading engineering teams • A track record of shipping production software in networking, connectivity, broadband CPE or a closely adjacent domain • Deep, current hands-on strength in at least one of C/C++, Java, Go or Python, and the ability to be technically credible across the rest of the stack • Strong command of computer networking: L2/L3/L4, routing, switching, NAT, DHCP, DNS, VLANs, WAN and LAN architectures, and IEEE 802.11 • Working knowledge of standards-based device management — TR-369 (USP), TR-181, TR-069 — and what it takes to operate a data model across a heterogeneous device fleet • Experience with device provisioning, zero-touch onboarding, firmware/OTA update flows and device lifecycle at scale • Experience with cloud-based control planes: distributed systems, microservices, event streaming, stateful services, and the operational reality of running them • Demonstrated ability to grow engineers, give direct feedback well, and manage performance honestly • Excellent written and verbal communication; comfortable being the technical voice in front of a customer or an executive • Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Electronics, Telecommunications or equivalent practical experience Bonus Points For: • Experience with Wi-Fi optimization or RRM — channel and band steering, mesh topology optimization, client steering, airtime fairness • Hands-on work with OpenSync, RDK-B, prplOS, OpenWRT, hostapd/wpa_supplicant or EasyMesh (R2/R3) • Wi-Fi 6E / Wi-Fi 7 features such as MLO, OFDMA and MU-MIMO • Applied ML or data-driven optimization in a networking product • Experience working directly with ISPs or telecom operators as a customer • Prior experience standing up or scaling an engineering site or a new team • Contributions to open-source connectivity projects or standards bodies About Plume As the creator of the only open, hardware-independent, cloud-controlled experience platform for ISPs and their subscribers, Plume partners with over 400 ISP customers, including some of the world’s largest such as Comcast, Charter, Liberty Global, and J:COM. Using OpenSync, the most widely supported open-source, silicon-to-cloud framework for smart spaces, Plume’s software-defined network allows ISPs to decouple their service offerings from hardware and rapidly curate and deliver new services over a multi-vendor, open-platform architecture. Plume is an equal opportunity workplace that maintains a continuing policy of nondiscrimination in all employment practices and decisions, ensuring equal employment opportunities for all qualified individuals without regard to race, color, creed, religion, sex, national origin, age, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, pregnancy, childbirth or related individual conditions, medical conditions (as defined by state law), military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local law.