Software Engineering Manager, Software Platform

About the role Muon seeks an Software Engineering Manager to lead our Software Platform team. This team builds and operates the paved roads (CI/CD, Kubernetes, Terraform, Bazel, AWS, IAM, data infrastructure, and more) that underpin both our internal tooling and the production systems behind customer-facing products such as Muon Mission Command. The Software Platform team is critical to the overall growth and success of Muon's software engineering organization: as the number of product teams, services, and customers expands, the leverage this team creates, through reduced cognitive load, eliminated toil, and self-service Golden Paths, directly determines how fast the rest of engineering can move. This manager will inherit a team of six engineers, and will be responsible for both scaling that team to meet current demand and evolving it into a product-minded platform organization whose customers are Muon's own developers. This position is hybrid and requires working on-site in our San Jose, CA office three days per week. Responsibilities Lead, mentor, and grow the Software Platform team. Own hiring, performance management, coaching, and team composition for a growing platform organization. Actively recruit engineers to meet the demands of a rapidly scaling software department. Define team goals, and technical roadmaps that align with companies priorities. Ensure reliability, scalability, and performance of mission-critical services operating in production. Work with cross-functional stakeholders to translate mission needs into clear requirements and technical specifications. Drive engineering best practices including design reviews, code quality, testing, and observability. Manage team capacity, staffing, and growth, including hiring, coaching, and performance development. Promote a culture of technical ownership, continuous improvement, and pragmatic delivery. Build feedback loops with developer-customers, prioritize based on real friction, and hold clear ownership boundaries so product teams retain accountability for their applications. Qualifications BS/MS in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field OR equivalent industry experience. 5+ years of software engineering experience and 3+ years managing software engineering teams building and operating production systems. Direct experience managing a platform, infrastructure, DevOps, or SRE team, including responsibility for hiring, performance management, coaching senior engineers, and shaping team composition. Strong technical background in distributed systems, backend services, or platform development, with hands-on depth in Kubernetes, Terraform, and AWS. Demonstrated experience supporting production systems with real uptime, reliability, and performance requirements (SLOs, on-call, incident response, postmortems). Track record of establishing paved roads / Golden Paths and treating internal platforms as products, with developers as customers. Experience running a DevOps or SRE function embedded within a platform team (rather than as a separate silo), consistent with our team model. Experience defining technical direction and driving execution through a team, including prioritization, roadmap ownership, and stakeholder alignment. Strong communication skills and comfort partnering with cross-functional stakeholders across engineering, security, and IT/information systems. Ability to hold clear ownership boundaries, comfortable saying "no" to work that belongs to product teams while still being a great partner to them. Nice-to-have Skills Hands-on experience with Bazel or another large-scale monorepo build system. Experience leading data engineering or data platform work as part of a broader platform team. Familiarity with Cloudflare, Artifactory, IAM/Okta, InfluxDB, or Grafana-based observability stacks. Experience scaling a platform team through a period of rapid organizational growth. Experience partnering closely with information security teams on platform-level controls (IAM, secrets management, supply chain). Familiarity with aerospace, satellite operations, or other high-reliability / mission-critical domains. Salary The salary range for this role is $210,000 - $234,000, plus a competitive equity grant and comprehensive benefits package. Final compensation will be determined based on skills, qualifications, experience, and geographic location as assessed during the interview process. About Muon Space Founded in 2021, Muon Space is an end-to-end Space Systems Provider that designs, builds, and operates LEO satellite constellations delivering mission-critical data. Our revolutionary, integrated technology stack enables customers to optimize every dimension of their missions for faster time-to-orbit and superior constellation remote sensing performance. Our state-of-the-art facility in the heart of Silicon Valley is optimized for manufacturing spacecraft and rapid, flexible payload integration at scale. From climate monitoring to national security, Muon Space is dedicated to delivering Earth Intelligence for a safer and more resilient world. Taking Care of Our Team At Muon salary is only part of our total compensation package. In addition to salary, full-time employees receive equity compensation as well as benefits including medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401k retirement plan, short & long term disability and life insurance. We also offer three weeks paid vacation for new employees, along with 12 paid holidays, unlimited sick time and paid parental leave. Our mission embraces the entire planet and we believe our team should too. Muon is dedicated to creating a diverse and dynamic company and workforce. We believe in equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, age, national origin, citizenship, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, or gender identity. We value diversity in the workplace, and that starts with our applicants. We encourage you to apply, even if you don't check all the boxes, and we look forward to reviewing your application! In addition, if you need a reasonable accommodation as part of your application for employment or interviews with us, please let us know. ITAR/EAR Requirements This position requires access to export controlled information. To conform to U.S. Government export regulations applicable to that information, applicant must either be (A) a U.S. person, defined as a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (green card holder), (iii) refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, (B) eligible to access the export controlled information without a required export authorization, or (C) eligible and reasonably likely to obtain the required export authorization from the applicable U.S. government agency. The Company may, for legitimate business reasons, decline to pursue any export licensing process.