Dropbox is a Virtual First company. For this role, we are currently only authorized to hire candidates from the following provinces: Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario, and Saskatchewan.

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, 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.

The Core Media & Intelligence team will lead the development of next-generation, AI-powered applications built end-to-end on top of Dropbox. The mission is to design and ship intelligent, vertical solutions that deeply understand customer workflows and deliver differentiated, high-impact experiences. The team will work at the forefront of applied AI—leveraging LLMs, building autonomous agents, advancing search and retrieval systems, and integrating computer vision and contextual intelligence to reimagine how users interact with their content. Beyond product innovation, the team will also pioneer AI-driven development practices, pushing the boundaries of how LLMs and modern AI tools accelerate engineering productivity and time to market. This is an opportunity to build category-defining AI experiences at scale, on a platform used by hundreds of millions of users worldwide.

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

Canada Pay Range

$204,900—$277,200 CAD

Company Description

Dropbox isn’t just a workplace—it’s a living lab for designing a more enlightened way of working. We’re a global community of bold visionaries and resourceful doers shaping the future of Dropbox and, in turn, the future of work. Our Virtual First model combines the autonomy of a distributed workplace with the power of human connection, creating space for meaningful work and lasting relationships. With a startup mindset and enterprise-level opportunities, we expect Dropbox employees to think critically, stay curious, and use modern tools, including AI, to improve how work gets done. Here, you can be who you are and grow into who you’re meant to be. You own your impact, helping make work more intuitive, joyful, and human for yourself and hundreds of millions of people worldwide. If you’re ready to push boundaries and challenge yourself, Dropbox is ready for you.

Team Description

The Dropbox Engineering Team develops the technology, platforms, and products that create more enlightened ways of working for hundreds of millions of people. Customers rely on Dropbox to manage, share, and collaborate on content seamlessly—our engineering makes that easier and more intuitive than ever before.Our platform features a robust systems software layer that stores and processes exabytes of data, and a suite of growing services that enhance core products like our sharing and sync engine. We’re also driving innovation with new offerings such as Dash, our AI-powered knowledge management engine. Our infrastructure spans high-performance servers and cutting-edge components across multiple data centers worldwide, ensuring reliability, speed, and scalability at a global scale. 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.

Virtual First

Dropbox’s Virtual First way of working is designed to help people do their best work with flexibility, autonomy, and connection. Day to day, teams work remotely with nonlinear schedules and core collaboration hours that support deep focus and individual working styles. We prioritize asynchronous communication to improve clarity, respect deep work time, and reduce unnecessary meetings. While remote work is the primary experience for our employees, we also prioritize intentional, in-person connection. We bring teams together through regular team gatherings, on-demand workspaces, and Dropbox Neighborhood events in order to strengthen team cohesion, foster creativity, and enhance momentum. Virtual First is built to provide the same access to opportunity, growth, and impact for everyone, regardless of location.

This role requires travel to offsites and various other team gatherings (approximately 5-10% of the year or 2-3 days per quarter). We provide advance notice when possible and encourage candidates to discuss any accommodation needs during the interview process.

Dropbox supports responsible use of AI for preparation, but misrepresentation of skills or experience is not permitted. See our AI Principles.

Dropbox is an equal opportunity employer. We are a welcoming place for everyone, and we do our best to make sure all people feel supported and connected at work.