Tech Stack

Description

You'll lead the Developer Experience team at Aiven, focusing on making the platform intuitive for developers through improved onboarding, documentation, and self-service tooling. You'll drive AI integration, gather developer feedback, and create innovative features to differentiate our cloud data platform.

Requirements

• At least five years of hands-on programming experience and two years in a people leadership role, or equivalent accomplishments.
• Proven track record of leading diverse teams from junior to senior engineers to deliver software products.
• Strong developer-centric product sense to design innovative APIs, CLIs, and documentation.
• Excellent communication skills in English, with ability to engage directly with customers and developer community.
• Ability to bring order and clarity to a dynamic, ambiguous environment.
• Experience in recruiting engineering talent and building high-performing teams.
• Experience with agile software development methodologies.
• Experience building and designing developer tooling, SDKs, and REST APIs for a cloud platform.
• Experience with Infrastructure-as-Code tools, particularly Terraform.
• Strong knowledge of developer documentation best practices and tutorials.
• Good grasp of monitoring and observability tools like Prometheus, Grafana, and OpenTelemetry.
• Ability to understand and work with platform components to identify and remove developer friction points.
• Genuine interest in solving complex technical challenges with customer-focused solutions.

Responsibilities

• Ensure the platform is easy and intuitive for developers to use by simplifying onboarding, improving documentation, and building self-service tooling.
• Lead the strategy and execution for integrating AI tools and capabilities into the platform to enhance developer productivity and innovation.
• Establish feedback loops with external and internal developer communities to understand pain points and prioritize platform improvements.
• Ideate and develop innovative developer-facing features, SDKs, and integrations to drive product engagement and growth.
• Partner with Product Manager and Domain Head to create the team's roadmap, balancing business growth with engineering initiatives.
• Oversee the team's backlog and projects, providing clear updates to stakeholders on progress and blockers.
• Champion a culture of urgency and ownership to deliver impactful results, accountable for quality, security, and reliability.
• Define and champion the integration of AI/ML services and tooling.
• Empower team to act as 'product custodians' by addressing foundational and production issues.
• Provide clear goals and feedback to manage expectations and drive individual and team performance.
• Lead team meetings such as planning sessions and retrospectives to improve workflows.
• Foster a psychologically safe, high-trust environment encouraging curiosity and healthy debate.
• Ensure effective communication and collaboration with Developer Relations and Product Marketing teams.