Software Engineering Manager Jobs in California
Software Engineering Manager jobs in California are among the most active in the country, concentrated in enterprise software, cloud infrastructure, consumer technology, and defense-adjacent systems development across seniority levels from first-time manager through distinguished principal manager. The largest hiring metros are the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, and San Diego, where companies like Google, Apple, and Salesforce maintain major engineering operations. Most in-demand specialties include platform engineering leadership, machine learning infrastructure, and distributed systems management. Find a role that fits below and apply directly.
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Software Engineering Director, AI for Incident Response Responsibilities:
- Define and drive the engineering strategy and roadmap for AI-powered incident response, progressing from investigation and diagnosis to safe, end-to-end mitigation and continuous learning
- Lead the architecture and delivery of an agent that reasons across telemetry, code, configurations, deployments, service dependencies, and incident history to identify root causes and take appropriate action
- Establish a human-on-the-loop operating model with progressive autonomy, explicit policy and permission boundaries, independent validation, auditability, rollback, and clear escalation paths
- Build Opsmate as an extensible platform that combines shared, out-of-the-box capabilities with domain-specific skills and agents contributed by product groups and individual on-call engineers
- Establish trusted evaluation and measurement systems that connect agent quality to customer and reliability outcomes, including investigation accuracy, adoption, time to mitigation, and reduced operational effort
- Partner deeply with product groups, infrastructure teams, product management, and data science to understand what success means for their services and build toward shared outcomes
- Ensure the platform itself meets a high bar for reliability, latency, scale, security, privacy, and cost in Meta’s production environment
- Build and grow an engineering organization that consistently delivers measurable results by attracting, developing, and retaining engineers and engineering managers across distributed systems, reliability, and applied AI
- Create a culture of technical depth, rapid learning, operational excellence, and accountability for realized customer impact
- Contribute to company-wide engineering and AI initiatives, including recruiting, technical standards, and responsible AI practices
Minimum Qualifications:
- 10+ years of software engineering experience, including experience in technical leadership roles
- 7+ years of engineering management experience, including leading multiple teams or managers and delivering products or systems with measurable impact
- Experience defining and executing engineering strategy for large-scale distributed systems, reliability platforms, developer infrastructure, or production AI systems
- Experience building and operating systems that support critical, always-on production workloads
- Track record of building broadly adopted platforms and driving outcomes across organizational boundaries
- Experience evaluating complex automated systems and establishing safeguards for trustworthy production operation
- Experience building engineering teams through hiring, onboarding, and developing engineers and managers at multiple levels
- Experience partnering cross-functionally with product, data science, and infrastructure organizations
Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience with incident management, SRE, observability, oncall operations, or automated remediation at significant scale
- Experience designing safe execution systems, including identity, authorization, sandboxing, validation, rollback, and auditability
- Experience building extensible platforms that allow domain teams to contribute specialized capabilities while preserving a coherent user experience and control plane
- Track record of taking a technically ambitious product from early adoption to trusted, broad production use
- Experience managing other engineering managers and building a deep technical and management bench across multiple levels
- Experience operating LLM-based or tool-using agents in production, including evaluation, orchestration, and progressive autonomy
About Meta:
Meta builds technologies that help people connect, find communities, and grow businesses. When Facebook launched in 2004, it changed the way people connect. Apps like Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp further empowered billions around the world. Now, Meta is moving beyond 2D screens toward immersive experiences like augmented and virtual reality to help build the next evolution in social technology. People who choose to build their careers by building with us at Meta help shape a future that will take us beyond what digital connection makes possible today—beyond the constraints of screens, the limits of distance, and even the rules of physics.Meta is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities in our recruiting process. If you need any assistance or accommodations due to a disability, please let us know at accommodations-ext@meta.com.
$271,000/year to $347,000/year + bonus + equity + benefits
Individual compensation is determined by skills, qualifications, experience, and location. Compensation details listed in this posting reflect the base hourly rate, monthly rate, or annual salary only, and do not include bonus, equity or sales incentives, if applicable. In addition to base compensation, Meta offers benefits. Learn more about benefits at Meta.
See All 422+ Software Engineering Manager Jobs in California
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Find JobsSoftware Engineering Manager Jobs by City in California
Where California roles are concentrated, by current openings.
Software Engineering Manager Job Market in California
A snapshot from current California openings, updated as new roles post.
Who's Hiring
- Google49

- Apple37

- Tesla18

- Cisco9

- Intuit8

Top Industries Hiring
- Technology & Software41
- Electronics & Hardware16
- Banking & Financial Services7
- Manufacturing3
- Law & Legal Services3
What California Employers Look For
The qualifications that appear most often in software engineering manager jobs across California.
- Bachelor's or master's degree in computer science, software engineering, or a related technical field
- At least five years of hands-on software engineering experience before moving into management
- Demonstrated experience directly managing software engineers or leading cross-functional technical teams
- Strong proficiency with modern software development practices including agile, CI/CD, and code review processes
- Experience driving engineering roadmaps in collaboration with product managers and senior leadership
- Familiarity with cloud platforms such as AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure in a production engineering environment
Software Engineering Manager Jobs in California: Frequently Asked Questions
How do you become a software engineering manager in California?
Becoming a software engineering manager in California typically follows a path from individual contributor engineer to a tech lead or staff engineer role before stepping into management. California employers, especially in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, most commonly promote from within or recruit candidates who have led engineering projects or mentored junior engineers. No state-issued license is required, but a bachelor's or master's degree in computer science or engineering, combined with a strong code and leadership record, is the standard baseline California hiring managers expect.
Which companies hire software engineering managers in California?
Employers hiring software engineering managers in California right now include Google, Apple, and Tesla, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of September 2026. California's deep concentration of technology headquarters and research centers means the state consistently generates some of the highest volumes of these openings nationwide across both large enterprise employers and growth-stage companies.
Which California cities have the most software engineering manager jobs?
The California cities with the most software engineering manager openings are San Francisco, Sunnyvale, and Palo Alto. The San Francisco Bay Area dominates the distribution because of its density of technology headquarters and venture-backed engineering teams, while Los Angeles draws openings through its expanding tech and entertainment-technology sector, and San Diego contributes through its defense technology and biotech software organizations.
Are there remote software engineering manager jobs in California?
Yes, and more than most fields. About 60% of software engineering manager openings tied to California are remote or hybrid as of September 2026, reflecting how central distributed engineering teams have become across the California technology industry. The parts of the role most likely to stay fully remote are those focused on roadmap planning, code review, and cross-team coordination, rather than roles that require regular on-site presence with hardware or lab environments.
How can I get hired as a software engineering manager in California with little or no experience?
The most realistic entry path is moving into a tech lead or engineering lead role first, which gives you people management exposure without requiring a formal manager title. Large California employers including Google, Meta, and Apple run structured rotational and associate programs that develop senior engineers into managers, and many mid-size Bay Area and Los Angeles companies promote strong individual contributors who proactively mentor peers. Building a portfolio of cross-functional projects, leading a meaningful open-source initiative, or completing a recognized leadership development program can strengthen a candidacy considerably in California's competitive market.
Where can I find and apply to software engineering manager jobs in California?
You can find and apply to software engineering manager jobs in California on Migrate Mate, which lists current California openings from employers actively hiring right now. Search for roles that match your experience level, location preference, and specialty area, then apply directly to the ones that fit.
See All 422+ Software Engineering Manager Jobs in California
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