Senior Engineering Manager, Core Media & Intelligence

Company Description

Dropbox isn’t just a workplace—it’s a living lab for more enlightened ways of working. We're a global community of bold visionaries and resourceful doers who are shaping the future of Dropbox—and with it the future of work. Our Virtual First model combines the autonomy of a distributed workplace with the power of human connection, making space for both meaningful work and meaningful relationships. With our start-up mindset and enterprise-level opportunities, you can be who you are and grow into who you’re meant to be. Here, you can own your impact to make work more intuitive, joyful, and human—for you as a Dropboxer and for hundreds of millions of people worldwide. If you're ready to push boundaries—and yourself— Dropbox is ready for you.

Team Description

The Dropbox Engineering Team builds the technology that creates more enlightened ways of working for hundreds of millions of people. Every day, our platforms—including Dropbox Dash, Dropbox Sign, and our core sync engine—handle over a billion files for users worldwide, creating engineering challenges as great as the opportunity for impact. Our software engineering team uses a range of technologies to solve interesting problems, including Python, React, Node.js, JavaScript, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, and Android development. We think like a startup but build for an enterprise, exploring new possibilities that transform how people work. If you're excited about turning complex technical challenges into intuitive solutions at scale, join our Engineering team. Areas of work include Machine Learning Engineers, Infrastructure Engineer, Product SWE Frontend and Backend, Mobile Software Engineers (iOS and Android), Engineering Manager, Data Engineer, Software Development Engineer in Test, Security Engineering, Site Reliability Engineer, Technical Program Managers, Network Engineer, Datacenter Engineer, Technical Supply Chain Manager and more.

Role Description

At Dropbox, we believe in simplifying the way people work together. We provide a range of innovative cloud-based solutions to empower individuals and businesses to share, access, and collaborate on their files seamlessly. Engineering Managers are pivotal in shaping our mission of building a more enlightened way of working where everyone can unleash their creative potential without constraints.

As a Senior Engineering Manager, Core Media & Intelligence, you’ll thrive in our team if you love chasing impact, working through ambiguity, and developing a culture of innovation. In this role, you’ll lead a team of 12-20 engineers, leveraging your robust managerial toolbox to drive direct business and customer impact independently. You’ll work closely with your direct reports, cross-functional partners, and other teams to build the future of Dropbox. Our team culture rewards a bias for action, engineering partnership in defining our strategy, and efficient operational excellence. The ideal candidate will possess strong leadership skills, technical expertise, and a passion for driving results in a collaborative, virtual-first environment.

On our Core Media & Intelligence team, you will be responsible for leading AI integrations into Dropbox’s flagship File Sync & Share product. This team is responsible for integrating the Dash product into our existing file-focused workflows and for our existing Dropbox customers, as well as evolving Dash to become a platform product. This team will create a new platform/API abstraction to enable all Core teams easily integrate with AI-powered capabilities and build agents leveraging Dash and other technologies. This is a high visibility role leading a high priority for Dropbox and has the opportunity to shape our future company direction, as we evolve the Dropbox product from sync and storage to an AI-powered workspace.

Our Engineering Career Framework is viewable by anyone outside the company and describes what’s expected for our engineers at each of our career levels. Check out our blog post on this topic and more here.

Responsibilities

• Directly manage up to 20 direct reports, as a single execution unit
• Partner with multiple Product Managers to plan roadmaps and sprints
• Be accountable for high quality execution on critical and high visibility business objectives
• Be responsible for making tradeoffs between feature work and addressing long term technical debt
• Be responsible for excellence in software quality, engineering practices and operations
• Lead the team through standard Agile processes, such as backlog management, stand ups, retros, etc.
• Review and approve engineering designs and be able to set technical direction (in collaboration with a Technical Lead)
• Drive cross-org initiatives alongside managing execution responsibilities
• Drive career conversations and career plans for your direct reports

Requirements

• BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science or a related technical field involving coding (e.g., physics or mathematics) or equivalent technical experience
• Minimum of 8 years of people management experience with an engineering team
• Minimum of 10 years as a software engineer or equivalent technical experience
• Must have experience managing engineering organizations of 20 or above and experience managing managers
• Must have experience building or integrating with AI products
• Must have worked in a platform team or a developer-facing API product with both internal and external consumers
• Must have experience running a standard Agile process such as backlog management, stand ups, retros, etc
• Must be results-driven, especially good at balancing execution predictability with the agility needed in bringing a new product to market

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience shipping AI-powered features in production, collaborating closely with ML engineers and product teams
• Strong backend engineering skills with systems that support model serving, inference, and data pipelines at scale
• Strong background in AI agent infrastructure and building AI agents
• Ability to evaluate AI models for a specific use case and advise on build vs buy decisions
• Expertise in distributed systems architecture — designing for scalability, fault tolerance, observability, and graceful degradation in multi-service environments.

Compensation

The expected annual salary for this role ranges from $198,600 to $335,800 USD, depending on location and experience. All regular employees are also eligible for the corporate bonus program as well as stock in the form of Restricted Stock Units (RSUs).

Benefits

Dropbox is committed to investing in the holistic health and wellbeing of all Dropboxers and their families. Our benefits and perks programs include, but are not limited to:

• Competitive medical, dental, and vision coverage
• 401(k) plan with a generous company match and immediate vesting
• Flexible PTO/Paid Time Off, paid holidays, Volunteer Time Off, and more, allowing you time to unplug, unwind, and refresh
• Income Protection Plans: Life and disability insurance
• Business Travel Protection: Travel medical and accident insurance
• Perks Allowance to be used on what matters most to you, whether that’s wellness, learning and development, food and groceries, and much more
• Parental benefits including: Parental Leave, Child and Adult Care, Day Care FSA, Fertility Benefits, Adoption and Surrogacy Support, and Lactation Support
• Access to over 10,000 global co-working spaces through Gable.to making it easy to book flexible workspaces for collaboration or individual work
• Quarterly Cell phone and internet allowance
• Mental health and wellness benefits
• Disability and neurodivergence support benefits

Key skills/competency

• Engineering Management
• AI Integration
• Platform Development
• Distributed Systems
• Agile Methodologies
• Team Leadership
• Roadmap Planning
• Software Quality
• Cross-Functional Collaboration
• Technical Leadership