Sr Mgr - IT Appl Development

Description

United's Digital Technology team is comprised of many talented individuals all working together with cutting-edge technology to build the best airline in the history of aviation. Our team designs, develops and maintains massively scaling technology solutions brought to life with innovative architectures, data analytics, and digital solutions.

Job overview and responsibilities

We are looking for an exceptional Engineering Manager, Software Development to lead and grow our engineering team in India. This is a leadership role for someone who has earned credibility as a seasoned software engineer, has grown into a master coach and developer of people, and knows how to create a culture of accountability, technical excellence, and pride in ownership.

You will lead an existing team of approximately 13 engineers, with plans to continue hiring and scaling the team. The ideal candidate is not simply a project manager or people manager. We are looking for someone who can set a high technical bar, coach engineers to become better problem-solvers, build trust across global teams, and take end-to-end ownership of critical software systems.

This leader will likely assume ownership of a key vendor platform, Accelya FLX-M, and will be expected to build deep functional, technical, operational, and vendor-management expertise around it. The role requires strong judgment, disciplined execution, and a deep understanding of AWS-based systems, cloud architecture, reliability, integration patterns, and production operations.

Above all, we are looking for someone who is an inspiring example for the team: technically strong, calm under pressure, accountable, generous with coaching, and relentless about helping people and systems improve.        

• Lead, manage, and develop a high-performing engineering team, driving coaching, feedback, and career growth while building future technical leaders
• Own end-to-end delivery of software solutions, including planning, execution, risk management, and ensuring predictable, high-quality outcomes
• Partner with product, business, vendor, and global stakeholders to align priorities, manage trade-offs, and ensure successful delivery of business-critical systems
• Provide technical leadership across architecture, design, and production systems; guide teams toward scalable, maintainable, and reliable solutions
• Drive engineering excellence through best practices in code quality, automated testing, CI/CD, DevOps, observability, and production readiness
• Lead AWS-based engineering, ensuring solutions are secure, scalable, resilient, and cost-efficient
• Own and manage vendor platforms (e.g., Accelya FLX-M), including integrations, technical operations, and vendor coordination
• Establish strong delivery discipline, including sprint planning, release management, dependency handling, and incident response
• Build and promote a culture of accountability, ownership, and continuous improvement across the engineering organization 
• Support hiring, onboarding, performance management, and team scaling in India
• Manage incident reviews, root-cause analysis, and drive continuous improvements in system reliability and performance
• Collaborate effectively across distributed teams and time zones 

This position is offered on local terms and conditions within United’s wholly owned subsidiary United Airlines Business Services Pvt. Ltd. Expatriate assignments and sponsorship for employment visas, even on a time-limited visa status, will not be awarded. This position is for United Airlines Business Services Pvt. Ltd - a wholly owned subsidiary of United Airlines Inc.

Qualifications

Qualifications 

The ideal candidate is a seasoned engineering leader who combines technical depth with exceptional people leadership. You should be the kind of leader engineers respect because you understand the work, raise the standard, and help people become better. 

What’s needed to succeed (Minimum Qualifications):

• 15+ years of experience in software engineering, platform engineering, cloud engineering, or related fields
• 5+ years of experience managing software engineering teams, including teams of 10+ engineers
• Strong hands-on software development background with experience designing, building, integrating, and operating production-grade systems
• Deep expertise in AWS and cloud-native engineering, with proven experience in production environments
• Strong understanding of distributed systems, APIs, integration patterns, event-driven architecture, and production operations
• Experience delivering and operating business-critical applications or platforms
• Experience working with enterprise platforms, SaaS solutions, vendor systems, or complex third-party integrations
• Solid experience across the software delivery lifecycle, including Agile, release management, CI/CD, testing, observability, and production support
• Strong technical judgment in architecture decisions, trade-offs, delivery risks, and operational readiness
• Proven people leadership skills, including coaching, mentoring, performance management, hiring, and developing engineers and future leaders
• Demonstrated ability to build accountability and ownership-driven teams without unnecessary bureaucracy
• Ability to operate in ambiguity, structure complex problems, and drive decisions effectively
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with experience working across global and cross-functional teams
• Must be hands-on with Generative AI (GenAI) and Agentic AI, with demonstrated daily use of AI-powered tools to enhance productivity, automate workflows, and solve business problems.
• Leadership style grounded in ownership, humility, clarity, and continuous improvement 

What will help you propel from the pack (Preferred Qualifications):

• Experience in airline, travel, retailing, offer management, merchandising, distribution, pricing, or revenue-management systems.
• Experience with Accelya FLX-M, FLX ONE Merchandising, NDC, airline retailing, or similar airline technology platforms.
• Experience managing vendor-owned or third-party enterprise platforms.
• Experience scaling engineering teams in India.
• Experience working with globally distributed engineering, product, and operations teams.
• AWS certification or equivalent demonstrated AWS expertise.
• Experience with infrastructure as code, container platforms, serverless architectures, observability tools, and incident-management practices.
• Experience modernizing legacy systems or integrating vendor platforms into cloud-native ecosystems.