- Employment
- Full-Time
- Seniority
- Manager
- Compensation
- $205,000–225,000/year
- Department
- IT & Technology Systems
- Posted
- Nov 10, 2026
About Sotheby's
Sotheby’s is an auction house founded in London in 1744. Its specialists work across fine art and collecting categories including jewelry, watches, handbags, wine, design, and classic cars. The house connects collectors through live and online auctions, private sales, and fixed-price purchases. Its work spans specialist research and cataloging, client services, marketing, technology, finance, and operations, supporting the preparation, sale, and movement of objects across its international network.
Sotheby's seeks an Engineering Manager to lead a distributed engineering team and own the technical delivery of a new platform initiative from concept through launch, partnering with product, design, and cross-functional stakeholders. The role combines hands-on team leadership, roadmap and delivery ownership, technical quality, and platform strategy; the proposed base salary is $205,000–$225,000 annually, with eligibility for a discretionary bonus.
Role & Responsibilities
- Lead the engineering build of a new platform from the ground up, from initial architecture decisions through launch.
- Own the health, output, and growth of a distributed engineering team, from hiring through career development and performance management.
- Partner with product management to shape the team roadmap, balancing feature delivery, technical investment, and operational health.
- Set and maintain quality standards for the team’s area of the platform, including engineering practices, observability, reliability, and work review.
- Run delivery planning, prioritisation, retrospectives, and day-to-day work to keep delivery moving and unblock the team.
- Manage cross-team dependencies and communication, reducing coordination overhead and ensuring work is not missed.
- Contribute to engineering-wide standards, tooling, process improvement, and initiatives to develop engineers across the organisation.
- Handle incidents and operational issues with the team, own follow-up, and ensure appropriate fixes are made.
- Give engineers regular, honest feedback and create meaningful opportunities for growth.
- Develop and maintain a build, buy, or hybrid strategy for each platform domain, and manage third-party vendors and integrations behind a controlled interface layer.
- Turn ambiguity into a scoped technical plan, raising risks and trade-offs early and making clear recommendations.
Qualifications
- At least 3 years managing teams of five or more engineers.
- Proven engineering management experience with distributed teams across multiple time zones.
- Strong software engineering background with sufficient technical depth to guide architectural and infrastructure decisions.
- Experience taking at least one 0-to-1 product from initial architecture through launch, ideally at an early-stage startup.
- Ability to work to a fixed launch date across multiple parallel workstreams with a small, senior team and limited resources.
- Ability to work on a confidential, pre-announcement initiative and maintain discretion outside the immediate team.
- Experience partnering with product management to define priorities and deliver meaningful outcomes.
- Track record of effective hiring and onboarding, and building teams that retain strong people.
- Focus on engineering quality, including observability, analytics and reporting, testing practices, and delivering work the team can stand behind.
- Ability to engage credibly with architectural decisions, assess trade-offs, and identify problems before they become incidents.
- Ability to deliver through the team, focusing on outcomes rather than individual output or activity.
- Clear communication tailored to the audience, including providing team context, presenting plans to leadership, writing post-mortems, and handling difficult conversations with direct reports.
- Ability to create clarity amid shifting priorities, tangled dependencies, and changing plans.
- Familiarity with Go, Scala, React/TypeScript, Next.js, GraphQL, and gRPC.
- Experience with AWS cloud infrastructure and Kubernetes container orchestration.
- Background in real-time, event-driven, or high-value transaction systems.
- Experience establishing engineering standards, governance, or communities of practice.
- E-commerce, marketplace, or auction domain experience.
Skills
Experience
At least 3 years managing teams of five or more engineers; experience taking at least one 0-to-1 product from initial architecture through launch, ideally at an early-stage startup.
Workplace
The role is situated in New York, New York, USA.
Explore jobs in New York or in the USA.
Compensation
The base compensation for this position ranges from USD 205,000 to USD 225,000 per annum.
Benefits
Discretionary bonus; private health insurance; health cash plan; dental insurance; workplace nursery benefit; generous holiday allowance; Christmas shutdown; summer Fridays; volunteer and wellbeing days; hardware; cycle-to-work scheme; eye care vouchers; regular social events and meetups; use of the London space.
Culture
Sotheby’s describes its culture in terms of client service, specialist knowledge, curiosity, collaboration, and ethical conduct. Its careers materials emphasize working across disciplines and encouraging employees to explore internal opportunities.
About Cerulean
Cerulean is the definitive career portal for the global luxury industry. We match exceptional professionals with exclusive opportunities at the world's most prestigious brands. From haute couture and fine watchmaking to prestige beauty, hospitality, and boutique retail, Cerulean centralises luxury employment to help you find the career for which you were destined.