Senior Manager, Software Engineering — Case Management Platform

Senior Manager, Software Engineering — Case Management Platform

POSITION TITLE: Senior Manager, Software Engineering — Case Management Platform (CMP)

POSITION LOCATION: San Carlos, CA, Austin, TX, or Remote, USA

POSITION SUMMARY

Natera is seeking a hands-on, technically deep Senior Manager of Software Engineering to lead our Case Management Platform (CMP) Core team. CMP is the technical backbone that moves patient cases from order to result across Natera's oncology, women's health, and organ health product lines — software whose reliability translates directly into turnaround time, lab efficiency, and patient outcomes.

This is explicitly not a people-management-only role. You will integration into an existing platform application department and build a new high leverage squad with a distinct mission to bridge Natera's commerce and fulfillment domains. With a small initial footprint, you are expected to be in the code: setting architectural direction, writing and reviewing code, driving production support, and modeling the engineering standard. As the team grows, you will rebalance your time toward leadership, hiring, and strategy — but hands-on technical credibility is a permanent requirement of this role.

We are looking for an agent of change. CMP is pushing hard on AI-native ways of working, mission-based team structure, and InnerSource stewardship. You will not just adopt these shifts — you will drive them.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Lead technically

Set and defend the architectural direction for your scope; make the hard trade-off calls and own the outcomes

Write production code, review PRs, and participate in production incident response alongside the team

Drive design reviews; raise the technical bar through example, not memo

Own the full SDLC for your systems — conception, design, implementation, test, release, operation, and sunset

Manage and grow people

Hire and develop top performers; recruit for attitude as aggressively as for aptitude

Hold regular 1:1s, deliver direct feedback with radical candor, and address underperformance quickly and respectfully

Guide career development; create real ownership opportunities and delegate decisions, not just tasks

Build a diverse, high-trust team that reflects the users and patients we serve

Drive the AI-native transformation

Treat AI as core to how the team builds, delivers, and operates — not an experiment on the side

Champion the adoption of AI coding tools, agent orchestration, and AI-assisted operations across your team and influence peer teams to follow

Measure and communicate the leverage AI is creating in your org; retire practices that no longer earn their keep

Partner across the business

Act as the primary technical point of contact for product management, commerce stakeholders, lab operations, and adjacent engineering teams

Build and maintain a working relationship with lab managers, lab supervisors, and commerce leaders — understand their world firsthand

Translate business priorities into engineering plans and translate engineering realities into options business leaders can act on

Manage delivery

Own estimates, scope, dependencies, risks, and delivery for your team's commitments

Run lean, outcome-oriented ceremonies; prefer visible work and short feedback loops over heavy process

Facilitate collaboration and remove blockers; escalate honestly and early

Effect change

Lead the evolution of our ways of working

Propose and drive improvements beyond the walls of your immediate team

QUALIFICATIONS

BS or MS in Computer Science or equivalent experience

8+ years of professional software development experience, with meaningful time building complex data or process-management applications

3+ years leading engineering teams, with a track record of hiring, developing, and retaining strong engineers

Demonstrated hands-on technical ability — recent experience writing production code, leading design reviews, and troubleshooting production issues as a manager, not only as an individual contributor

Strong fluency in Java or another object-oriented language, modern cloud infrastructure (AWS preferred, including Lambda and other stateless/serverless patterns), relational databases, and distributed systems

Demonstrated adoption of AI-assisted development, agent-based workflows, or similar modern engineering practices — and the ability to make others productive with them

Experience partnering with product management, operations, and business stakeholders in a matrixed environment

Excellent written and verbal communication; comfort operating across time zones with distributed and offshore teammates

Experience in biotech, healthcare, or another regulated industry is a strong plus

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, AND ABILITIES

Hands-on coding, design, and architecture skills — currently practiced, not historical

Deep understanding of software architecture and the full SDLC in a regulated environment

Proven record of managing highly effective, mission-oriented teams and building leadership bench strength beneath you

Comfort diagnosing production problems at all levels — from triage and workaround through root cause and prevention

Expertise building scalable, resilient distributed systems on AWS, with a bias toward simple, stateless, event-driven designs

Strong product sense; able to challenge requirements and reshape the problem when that's the better answer

Extreme ownership: keeps promises, closes loops, and models the behavior expected of the team

"Yes if" attitude — focused on finding paths forward and making constraints explicit

Humble, direct, and resilient; gives and receives feedback well

Commitment to diversity, inclusion, and building teams where people do their best work