Head of Engineering Operations (Relocation to Bangkok, Thailand) in London

Manatal is an HRTech software service (B2B SaaS) company headquartered in Bangkok, Thailand. Manatal is one of the fastest-growing start-ups in the region and is backed by Surge and Sequoia Capital. Manatal has a global presence and is trusted by thousands of businesses in over 135 countries. Our goal is to transform the entire hiring process by making it simple, efficient, and enjoyable for recruiters, hiring managers, and candidates alike. Our mission is to offer the best-in-class AI-powered technologies to empower small, medium, and large businesses in their staffing & recruitment transformation.

As Manatal expands into the enterprise segment, the operational demands on engineering are growing beyond what product squads can absorb alongside feature development. Internal requests, data migrations, bug triage, and customer-facing technical work require dedicated engineering ownership to maintain quality and velocity across the organization. The Head of Engineering Operations will own this function. Reporting to the Director of Engineering, this role is responsible for all engineering work that falls outside of product feature development and platform engineering but is critical to customer satisfaction, platform reliability, and business growth. This includes building and leading a team, establishing processes and SLAs, and systematically automating operational workflows.

This is a deeply technical, hands-on leadership position. The successful candidate will write production code across our backend (Python/Django, FastAPI) and frontend (Vue.js, React) codebases, contribute to both internal tooling and customer-facing repositories, and be capable of investigating and troubleshooting infrastructure-level issues. This person is expected to operate at the same technical level as our Director of Engineering and Head of Platform Engineering.

The role also serves as the primary engineering counterpart to the L3 support team (which reports into Customer Support), ensuring that technical escalations are resolved efficiently and that product squads remain focused on product delivery. We are looking for a candidate who is energized by high-tempo environments, comfortable engaging directly with customers, and capable of managing multiple priorities under pressure. Strong judgment in prioritization and effective delegation are essential.

• Engineering Requests & Customer-Facing Support
  • Own the intake, prioritization, and resolution of all internal engineering requests (data exports, credit adjustments, technical investigations, one-off scripts).
  • Define and enforce SLAs to provide customer-facing teams with clear expectations and predictable response times.
  • Serve as the primary engineering point of contact for the L3 support team, meeting regularly to unblock escalations and ensure timely resolution.
• Data Migrations
  • Own the data migration process end-to-end: intake, scoping, execution, and validation.
  • Design, build, and improve migration pipelines to significantly reduce turnaround times.
  • Troubleshoot and debug migration failures across the full stack (application, database, infrastructure).
  • Data migrations are among Manatal's highest-stakes operational challenges and a key driver of customer retention.
• Software Development & Tooling
  • Write production code across Manatal's backend (Python/Django, FastAPI) and frontend (Vue.js, React) codebases to fix bugs, implement operational improvements, and connect systems.
  • Build and maintain internal tools (Retool, custom applications) that enable customer-facing teams to self-serve on tasks that currently require engineering intervention.
  • Maintain and update API endpoints and Open API documentation as required.
  • Identify and systematically eliminate repetitive manual work through automation.
• Bug Intake, Routing & Lifecycle
  • Own the bug triage process: intake, severity assessment, routing to the appropriate squad, and lifecycle tracking through resolution.
  • Define and maintain bug SLAs. Implement automated reporting to provide leadership with visibility into bug volume, resolution times, and trends.
  • Manage vulnerability report intake and ensure findings are triaged and routed to the appropriate team.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration
  • Work closely with the Director of Engineering to protect squad focus by absorbing operational engineering load.
  • Partner with Customer Support, Sales, and L3 to identify pain points and deliver engineering solutions.
  • Exercise strong judgment on escalation: determine when to resolve directly, when to delegate within the team, and when to engage a product squad.

• 5+ years of hands-on software engineering experience, with demonstrated ability to lead a team while remaining deeply involved in technical work.
• Strong proficiency in Python (Django and/or FastAPI), with the ability to write and ship production-quality code.
• Experience with frontend development (Vue.js or React), including the ability to build interfaces and contribute to customer-facing applications.
• Solid understanding of cloud infrastructure, with the ability to investigate production issues, interpret logs, and troubleshoot across the stack.
• Experience building or improving operational processes (bug triage, internal tooling, SLAs, request management).
• Demonstrated ability to work directly with customers or customer-facing teams on technical matters.
• Strong prioritization skills and the ability to manage multiple concurrent workstreams under pressure.
• People management experience.
• Excellent communication skills in English, both written and verbal.

• Experience with data migrations or data pipeline work at scale.
• Experience in a B2B platform company transitioning from SMB to enterprise.
• Background in building self-service tooling for non-technical teams (Retool or similar).
• Familiarity with API documentation standards (OpenAPI/Swagger).
• Familiarity with AI-assisted workflows for operational automation.
• Experience with recruitment technology or HR tech.

This role is based at our Bangkok office in the heart of the city centre. As a team of diverse cultures and nationalities, English language proficiency is required. We enjoy collaborating in person, and the team is working on-site.

• Well-funded start-up backed by Surge & Sequoia.
• Be part of one of the fastest-growing B2B SaaS start-ups in the region.
• You will be collaborating with talented individuals in the industry.
• Join a lively and highly international team.
• Indulge in a challenging and innovative working culture.
• Attractive medical healthcare plan.
• Personal development allowance.
• 2 weeks of work from anywhere per year.
• Regular fun team-building activities.

You can expect in our hiring process some or all of the following rounds:

• Introduction interview with the HR team.
• Introduction interview with CTO and/or Director of Engineering.
• Technical Interview with technical assessment.
• Cultural fit interview with top management team.

Our engineering team leverages a variety of modern technologies. While working at Manatal, you can expect to be exposed to the following stack:

• Infrastructure: Amazon Web Services; Kubernetes; GitOps (ArgoCD), GitHub Actions, Terraform, among others.
• Backend: Language: Python (Django, FastAPI); Databases: PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Open/ElasticSearch, and Redis, among others; Other: Celery, RabbitMQ, among others.
• Frontend: Typescript (Vue, React).

Learn more about Manatal: Get to know more about us and our product: Watch a product demo of Manatal product: Product Demo.

Manatal Hiring: At Manatal, we are dedicated to building an intuitive AI-powered application tracking system to streamline and transform the entire hiring and recruitment process. We are devoted to attracting the best talent worldwide to join our team and take pride in being an equal-opportunity workplace. We are committed to equal employment opportunities regardless of religion, race, ethnicity, ancestry, national origin, gender, gender identity, sex, sexual orientation, marital or parental status, disability, age, citizenship or other class protected by applicable law.