Engineering Manager – Data Platform, Lakehouse Foundation

Lyft Lyft · Consumer · Toronto, ON · Infrastructure

Lead a team responsible for Lyft's foundational data layer, including catalog and metadata management, table formats, and the gateway and access patterns that all other data systems build on. Drive the team's contribution to Lyft's multi-year lakehouse modernization, including the migration to Unity Catalog and the convergence of metadata across the data stack. Partner with peer Data Platform teams and engineering organizations across Lyft to ensure the foundation evolves coherently with the systems built on top of it. Define and own the team's technical direction, balancing platform-level investment with the day-to-day reliability needs of a foundational layer that thousands of pipelines and queries depend on. Mentor and guide the professional and technical development of engineers.

What you'd actually do

  1. Lead a team responsible for Lyft's foundational data layer, including catalog and metadata management, table formats (Iceberg/Delta), and the gateway and access patterns that all other data systems build on
  2. Drive the team's contribution to Lyft's multi-year lakehouse modernization, including the migration to Unity Catalog and the convergence of metadata across the data stack
  3. Partner with peer Data Platform teams (Compute, Data Trust & Governance, Data Orchestration, Streaming) and engineering organizations across Lyft to ensure the foundation evolves coherently with the systems built on top of it
  4. Define and own the team's technical direction, balancing platform-level investment with the day-to-day reliability needs of a foundational layer that thousands of pipelines and queries depend on
  5. Mentor and guide the professional and technical development of engineers across levels, including senior individual contributors operating at staff level and engineers early on in their careers

Skills

Required

  • 3+ years of experience as an Engineering Manager, leading teams of 5+ engineers including senior individual contributors
  • Experience managing data infrastructure or platform teams
  • Track record of leading teams through multi-quarter platform migrations or major architectural transitions, with demonstrated ability to make strategic decisions under ambiguity and navigate cross-team dependencies
  • Experience operating as the primary cross-org partner on initiatives that span multiple engineering teams, including aligning technical direction with peer teams, vendors, and senior stakeholders
  • Track record of developing engineers, including senior individual contributors on a staff trajectory, by matching them to ambitious technical scope and supporting their growth
  • Experience leading geographically distributed teams across time zones, including building communication practices that keep distributed teams operating as one integrated organization
  • Technical background sufficient to contribute meaningfully to architecture and design discussions, evaluate technical tradeoffs, and provide credible direction to senior engineers
  • Experience building inclusive teams with strong ownership culture
  • Excellent written and verbal communication, including the ability to operate at the strategic level with senior leadership and at the technical level with engineers

Nice to have

  • Direct experience with lakehouse architectures (Databricks, Snowflake) and modern table formats (Delta, Iceberg, Hudi) strongly preferred

What the JD emphasized

  • multi-year platform migrations
  • major architectural transitions
  • strategic decisions under ambiguity
  • navigate cross-team dependencies
  • primary cross-org partner
  • aligning technical direction
  • senior stakeholders
  • developing engineers
  • ambitious technical scope