Manager, Engineering - Mobile

Overview

Our Story and Purpose Linden Lab develops platforms that empower people to create, connect, and thrive through transformative virtual experiences. Since our founding in 1999, we have been at the forefront of the creator economy, building durable platforms that support limitless imagination, self-expression, and human connection. Linden Lab launched Second Life in 2003, a vibrant, user-driven virtual world with a global community and a thriving economy.

Our values emphasize diversity, organizational health, strengths-based leadership, and collaborative teams. At Linden Lab, your work directly shapes how people connect, create, and build meaningful lives online.

You will be part of a thoughtful, mission-driven team working on technology with social impact and longevity. Whether you are building innovative tools or fostering a welcoming community, you will find a place to belong, grow, and do work that matters.

Your Mission

This role follows a Monday through Thursday in-office schedule at our San Francisco headquarters, with Fridays designated as a remote workday.

We are seeking an Engineering Manager, an active technical contributor, who will lead and grow a high-performing mobile engineering team through hands-on technical leadership and strong people management, guiding the evolution of Second Life’s mobile experience. In this individual contributor and people management role, reporting to the SVP of Engineering, you’ll translate organizational priorities into clear, executable plans while remaining deeply engaged in mobile architecture, design, implementation, and day-to-day technical decisions.

You’ll lead a hybrid team of internal engineers and external partners, help transform a complex, legacy-rich platform into an accessible, modern mobile product, collaborate closely with Product, Design, Platform Engineering, and external partners to drive architectural direction, and create an environment where engineers do their best work by setting expectations, removing blockers, coaching talent, and fostering accountability, trust, and continuous learning.

How You’ll Grow With Us

At the Lab, you ll experience the stability of an established company with over 20 years of expertise and the momentum of a startup driven by progress. Our San Francisco in-office environment fosters creativity, collaboration, and ingenuity with spaces designed for brainstorming and teamwork.

The Impact You’ll Drive

• Deliver high-quality mobile experiences by owning app quality, performance, and developer velocity.
• Guide technical direction through sound judgment and tradeoffs between scope, quality, and delivery.
• Develop engineers through regular feedback, career support, and hiring to build a strong, balanced team.
• Partner with Product, Design, Backend, QA, and Infrastructure to drive cohesive execution.
• Contribute to mobile engineering standards and best practices across teams.
• Lead and grow the mobile engineering team, including internal engineers and external contractors, emphasizing technical excellence and accountability.
• Act as a hands-on technical leader: reviewing designs, leading architectural discussions, and staying close to the code.
• Evaluate current mobile architecture (Unity client, React-based UI, proxy services) and propose improvements balancing performance, scalability, and velocity.
• Partner with UX and Product to translate product vision into executable technical plans and milestones.
• Own delivery of the mobile app: planning, execution, quality, release readiness, and post-launch learning.
• Grow and shape the mobile engineering team and collaborate with Marketing on acquisition, engagement, and experimentation pathways.
• Deliverables include roadmaps, reports, vendor relationships, and materials related to employee development; monitor metrics such as crash rates, ratings, performance, memory, DAU/MAU, retention, concurrency, and monetization.

• 7–10+ years of professional software engineering experience with a prior senior IC background, plus 3+ years leading or managing engineers with delivery and people development responsibilities.
• Strong hands-on…