Senior Engineering Manager - ML

• Organizations everywhere struggle under the crushing costs and complexities of “solutions” that
• promise to simplify their lives. To create a better experience for their customers and employees. To
• help them grow. Software is a choice that can make or break a business. Create better or worse
• experiences. Propel or throttle growth. Business software has become a blocker instead of ways to
• get work done.
• There’s another option. Freshworks. With a fresh vision for how the world works.
• At Freshworks, we build uncomplicated service software that delivers exceptional customer and
• employee experiences. Our enterprise-grade solutions are powerful, yet easy to use, and quick to
• deliver results. Our people-first approach to AI eliminates friction, making employees more effective
• and organizations more productive. Over 72,000 companies, including Bridgestone, New Balance,
• Nucor, S&P Global, and Sony Music, trust Freshworks’ customer experience (CX) and employee
• experience (EX) software to fuel customer loyalty and service efficiency. And, over 4,500 Freshworks
• employees make this possible, all around the world.
• Fresh vision. Real impact. Come build it with us.

About the Billing Platform

The Billing Platform is a foundational platform that powers how Freshworks manages and monetizes its products and customer relationships. The platform currently owns three critical capabilities:

Subscription Management - managing customer subscriptions, plans, products, and their lifecycle.

Entitlements - determining what customers are entitled to access and use based on their subscriptions and commercial agreements.

Metering - capturing and processing product usage to support usage-based billing and evolving monetization models.

These capabilities sit at the intersection of technology, product, pricing, finance, and customer experience and are consumed across multiple Freshworks products. As Freshworks continues to expand its product portfolio and evolve its monetization models, the Billing Platform will play a critical role in enabling new business models while ensuring scale, reliability, accuracy, and a great customer experience.

The Opportunity

We are looking for a Senior Engineering Manager to lead the engineering organization responsible for Subscription Management, Entitlements, and Metering. This role goes beyond managing engineering execution. You will shape the technology strategy, platform architecture, roadmap, engineering organization, and cross-functional partnerships that enable Freshworks' monetization journey. We are looking for a leader who is equally comfortable discussing distributed systems and architecture with engineers, business models with Product and Finance, and strategic priorities with senior leadership.

Most importantly, you should enjoy stepping outside the boundaries of engineering—meeting stakeholders from Product, Finance, Pricing, Sales, Customer Success, and other business functions, understanding their problems, and turning those problems into scalable technology solutions.

What You'll Do

• Lead Billing Platform Engineering

• Own the engineering strategy and technical direction for Subscription Management, Entitlements, and Metering.
• Build highly scalable, reliable, secure, and extensible platform capabilities.
• Drive architecture across distributed systems, APIs, data platforms, event-driven systems, and integrations.
• Design platforms that can support multiple products, subscription models, pricing structures, and evolving monetization strategies.
• Establish strong engineering practices around reliability, observability, security, performance, and operational excellence.

• Shape the Platform Strategy & Roadmap

• Partner closely with Product and business stakeholders to shape the Billing Platform roadmap.
• Translate business requirements and commercial models into scalable technology solutions.
• Identify opportunities to build reusable platform capabilities rather than product-specific solutions.
• Balance business priorities with platform modernization, technical debt, scalability, reliability, and long-term engineering investments.
• Anticipate future business and monetization needs and ensure the platform is ready to support them.

• Partner with Business & Non-Engineering Stakeholders

• This role requires strong engagement beyond engineering.
• Build trusted relationships with Product, Finance, Pricing, Sales, Customer Success, Operations, and other business teams.
• Understand the business and commercial models behind subscription and usage-based offerings.
• Participate actively in business discussions and explain technical implications in simple terms.
• Translate complex business problems into technology strategies and platform capabilities.
• Challenge requirements constructively when necessary and help stakeholders arrive at better solutions.
• Represent the Billing Platform in cross-functional and strategic initiatives.
• We are looking for a leader who is curious about the business, enjoys meeting people outside engineering, and wants to understand the problem behind the requirement - not just implement the requirement.

• Drive Execution & Business Outcomes

• Lead end-to-end execution of complex, cross-functional platform initiatives.
• Establish clear goals, milestones, ownership, and execution mechanisms.
• Proactively manage risks, dependencies, capacity, and organizational constraints.
• Drive predictable delivery while maintaining high engineering quality.
• Measure and improve platform health, engineering effectiveness, reliability, and business impact.

• Build High-Performing Engineering Teams

• Build, lead, and scale high-performing engineering teams.
• Develop Engineering Managers, Staff Engineers, and emerging technical leaders.
• Create a culture of ownership, accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
• Hire and retain strong engineering talent.
• Coach engineers and leaders to take broader ownership and operate with increasing autonomy.
• Build organizational capabilities that scale beyond the immediate team.

• Drive Engineering Excellence & AI Adoption

• Raise the bar on engineering productivity, quality, automation, and developer experience.
• Encourage modern engineering practices and AI-assisted development.
• Explore AI and agentic workflows to improve development, testing, deployment, operations, and engineering productivity.
• Establish meaningful engineering metrics around quality, reliability, delivery, and productivity.

What We're Looking For

Technical Leadership

• 15+ years of software engineering experience, with significant experience building and scaling large-scale platforms.
• 5+ years of engineering management experience.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems, microservices, APIs, databases, event-driven architectures, and cloud-native systems.
• Experience building shared platforms or services consumed by multiple products or teams.
• Strong understanding of scalability, reliability, security, observability, and operational excellence.
• Experience with billing, subscriptions, payments, commerce, entitlements, metering, or monetization platforms is helpful.

Business & Product Orientation

• Ability to connect technology decisions with business and revenue outcomes.
• Strong product and business mindset with the ability to translate business processes into scalable technology.
• Comfortable working closely with Product, Finance, Pricing, Sales, Customer Success, and other non-engineering stakeholders.
• Ability to influence business and product decisions through technology expertise.
• Genuine curiosity about how the business works and how technology can create leverage.

People Leadership

• Proven experience building and leading high-performing engineering organizations.
• Experience managing Engineering Managers and/or senior technical leaders is helpful.
• Strong track record of hiring, coaching, developing, and retaining engineering talent.
• Ability to create clarity and drive execution in ambiguous and complex environments.
• Passion for building autonomous teams and developing the next generation of engineering leaders.

Leadership & Influence

• Excellent communication and stakeholder-management skills.
• Ability to influence senior technical and business leaders across organizational boundaries.
• Strong judgment in balancing business urgency with engineering quality and long-term platform investments.
• Ability to simplify complex technical and business problems for diverse audiences.
• Collaborative leadership style with the ability to challenge constructively and build strong relationships.

The Leadership Profile We're Looking For

You are someone who

Thinks in platforms, not projects.

Understands both technology and business.

Enjoys solving complex problems with Product and business stakeholders.

Can move seamlessly between architecture, strategy, execution, and people leadership.

Creates clarity in ambiguous situations.

Challenges assumptions while building strong relationships.

Builds teams that can operate autonomously and scale.

Balances long-term platform thinking with near-term business outcomes.

Has deep technical judgment without needing to be the primary hands-on contributor.

Is passionate about building platforms, people, and organizational capabilities

At Freshworks, we have fostered an environment that enables everyone to find their true potential, purpose, and passion, welcoming colleagues of all backgrounds, genders, sexual orientations, religions, and ethnicities. We are committed to providing equal opportunity and believe that diversity in the workplace creates a more vibrant, richer environment that boosts the goals of our employees, communities, and business. Fresh vision. Real impact. Come build it with us.