Manager Engineering

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 teams software runs on tens of millions of live gateways and access points at some of the worlds 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 Youll 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 dont 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 Youll 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
• Bachelors or Masters 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