Manager, Software Engineering

dbt Labs

Lead the AI Platform Team at dbt Labs focusing on building a robust AI platform. Manage engineering team to enhance agent-based workflows and ensure technical excellence.

Posted 4/17/2026full-timeRemote • 🇺🇸 United StatesMid-LevelSenior💰 $186,000 - $225,000 per yearWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

CloudSQL

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Build, lead, and coach a team of 5–8 engineers focused on building a robust, scalable platform for AI agents.
Architect the "Agent-First" Experience: Move dbt beyond a UI-driven tool by building the APIs and services required for agents to reason, plan, and execute within the dbt ecosystem.
Define dbt’s MCP Strategy: Lead the development of dbt MCP tools that allow Claude, Codex, and other LLMs to fetch context, validate SQL, and understand metrics without leaving their development environment.
Bridge Platform and Product: Partner with product teams to ensure that the AI Platform provides the necessary primitives (memory, tool-calling, and reasoning loops) for dbt’s specific agentic use cases.
Coach engineers in building "Agent-ready" codebases—focusing on deterministic outputs from a non-deterministic world and the nuances of tool-use optimization.
Drive Technical Excellence: Establish the standards for how agents should interact with dbt Cloud, ensuring security, governance, and auditability are never compromised for autonomy.

Requirements

What you’ll need

3+ years in people management leading high-performing software engineering teams.
Experience with Agentic Architectures: You understand the lifecycle of an agentic loop (Plan -> Act -> Observe) and how to build infrastructure that supports it.
Technical Breadth in APIs & Protocols: Deep experience with API design, and ideally, familiarity with emerging standards like MCP (Model Context Protocol) or OpenAI Function Calling.
Software Engineering Fundamentals: You have a strong POV on how to maintain dbt’s "Analytics Engineering" rigors (testing, CI/CD) in an AI-driven world.

Benefits

Comp & perks

Unlimited vacation (and yes we use it!)
401k w/3% guaranteed contribution
Excellent healthcare
Paid Parental Leave
Wellness stipend
Home office stipend, and more!

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

API designAgentic ArchitecturesMCP (Model Context Protocol)OpenAI Function CallingCI/CDAnalytics Engineeringdeterministic outputstool-use optimizationscalable platform developmentsoftware engineering fundamentals

Soft Skills

people managementteam leadershipcoachingcollaborationcommunicationtechnical excellencestrategic planningproblem-solvingmentoringorganizational skills