Engineering Manager - Software/Cloud

RIVR, part of Amazon is a robotics company pioneering Physical AI through real-world doorstep delivery. Founded in 2024 as an ETH Zurich spin-off, RIVR developed wheeled-legged robots designed to operate in complex, unstructured environments such as stairs, gates, doors, and uneven urban terrain. We believe that achieving general physical intelligence requires solving real customer problems in the real world, where robots can learn from rich operational data at scale.

Following our acquisition by Amazon in March 2026, we are continuing this mission with greater reach and speed. By combining custom robot hardware, onboard autonomy, and cloud-based coordination, RIVR, part of Amazon is building the next generation of safe, reliable autonomous robots for last-mile delivery

Job Description

Following our acquisition by Amazon in March 2026, RIVR is accelerating its mission to build the next generation of safe, reliable autonomous robots for last-mile delivery. As an Engineering Manager for our Fleet & Cloud Systems team, you will grow and lead a high-performing squad of backend and infrastructure engineers building the server-side brains of our robotics platform.

You will drive the definition of the Cloud team roadmap, with the mission to support the needs of a robotic fleet at scale across its software development lifecycle. Your team will build the machine learning workflows that train the robot’s models. They will build infrastructure to provision and deploy robots at scale, with utmost attention to business continuity. Finally, they’ll build tools to streamline field operations, including observability, AI-assisted triaging and root cause analysis, predictive maintenance.

You will operate in a novel space, interacting with stakeholders from vastly different backgrounds. You will establish deep relationships with them and ensure your roadmap fits and anticipates their needs.

What you’ll be doing

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Lead, mentor, and grow a team of 5–8 DevOps, backend and full-stack engineers, conducting regular 1-on-1s, managing performance, and fostering a culture of high ownership, psychological safety, and candid feedback.

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Partner closely with other teams to design seamless, end-to-end features for robot operations and real-world delivery experiences.

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Collaborate with the bigger software org to structure projects, align timelines and adjust execution.

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Represent your team in technical and product discussions with Senior and Principal stakeholders.

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Own the team’s sprint planning, backlog grooming, and roadmap execution, while protecting your team from distractions, removing blockers proactively, and ensuring the steady velocity of high-quality software features.

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Be closely connected with the technology in your team, use your judgement to evaluate technical decisions and short-long term tradeoffs.

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Raise the bar for system availability, latency, and observability, while overseeing the team’s on-call rotations, running post-mortems for production incidents, and continuously improving CI/CD pipelines.

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Maintain a business-oriented mindset, translating complex logistical and operational requirements into concrete, scalable technical milestones that deliver immediate value to the field.

What you must have

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4+ years of experience formally leading engineering teams, managing sprints, and coaching developers.

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7+ years of professional experience building and operating large-scale backend systems in a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) or microservices context.

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Proven experience architecting solutions on AWS.

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Proven experience operating a complex SOA architecture at scale. Deep familiarity with failure modes in distributed systems and mechanisms to reduce the blast radius of outages and regressions.

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Experience with building and operating ML training infrastructure, integrating it in the SDLC. Experience with handling sensitive data and ensuring its safety and compliance.

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Proven ability to delegate and grow, yet remain connected to the technology details.

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Strong judgement: you identify and call-out one-way doors, you can independently check Senior Engineers’ assumptions and designs, you anticipate the impact and future cost of shortcuts and weight them against your immediate priorities.

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A deep sense of Ownership, a relentless drive to Earn Trust, and a passion for Developing the Best talent.

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Exceptional communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical ideas clearly to both technical teams and non-technical stakeholders.

Get some bonus points

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Exposure to cloud services communicating with physical edge devices such as robots.

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Background in robotics, IoT, fleet management, or real-time data streaming systems.

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Familiarity with observability tools (OTLP, Grafana, Prometheus) optimized for physical devices experiencing intermittent connectivity.

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Experience with Security topics in the context of cloud systems.

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Experience navigating organizational growth or integrating startup systems into large enterprise environments.

RIVR, part of Amazon is committed to building a diverse and inclusive team that values every perspective. If you’re passionate about driving innovation in robotics and creating meaningful impact, we encourage you to apply and bring your unique self to our team.

We believe the best work is done when collaborating and therefore require in-person presence in our office locations.

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Source: Arbeitnow (https://www.arbeitnow.ch/jobs/companies/rivr/engineering-manager-software-cloud-zurich-103499)