Systems Engineering Manager

Why Sonic? Since 1994, Sonic has been committed to building a faster, more affordable internet, and to hiring the nicest people around. We are looking for exceptional employees who want to challenge the industry for the better by putting members first and offering accessible connectivity for everyone. Foster your personal growth, develop your career, and make a difference in an industry where honest business practice has become optional. Every career opening at Sonic is an opportunity to join a dedicated team where each department works closely together with one another. Join a community-minded company that empowers the growth of a better internet — one home, one business, one employee at a time. POSITION TITLE: Systsems Engineering Manager DEPARTMENT: System Operations REPORTS TO: System Architect FLSA STATUE: Full-Time, Exempt, Benefited Compensation: $187,000-$207,000 Annualy Benefits & Perks Medical, Dental, and Vision coverage 401(k) + Profit Sharing Paid Time Off Education opportunities Paid comprehensive training Growth opportunities Paid pregnancy/bonding leave LOCATION: Bay Area, CA Position Summary: Leads a team of systems engineers and systems administrators responsible for the design, deployment, ongoing operation, and delivery of infrastructure and systems projects across Sonic’s production environment. This is a hands-on technical leadership role managing a small team of systems engineers and systems administrators. The manager is expected to remain an active technical contributor — participating directly in architecture, tooling, operations, and project execution — on the direction set by the Director of Engineering and Architecture and growing the team’s capabilities. Key Responsibilities Supervisor Responsibilities: Manage and mentor a team of systems engineers and systems administrators across a range of disciplines Lead hiring, onboarding, performance reviews, and professional development Execute goals and priorities as set by the Director, translating direction into team execution Plan, prioritize, and drive projects from scoping through delivery, balancing timelines, dependencies, and operational risk Collaborate and coordinate with peer engineering managers across Technology (IT, Network Engineering, and Software Engineering) to align on shared infrastructure, cross-functional projects, and organizational priorities Foster a culture of operational rigor, documentation, and continuous improvement Manage effective on-call rotations and lead incident response Functions as a player/coach: maintains active technical contribution alongside management responsibilities, including participation in architecture decisions, tooling development, and operational response Infrastructure & Operations Share responsibility for the reliability, availability, security, and performance of production systems across a large, heterogeneous Linux fleet Participate in and help drive fleet lifecycle management including OS upgrades, patching cadence, hardware refresh, and configuration management (Ansible and related tooling) Drive capacity planning and resource allocation across bare-metal, Proxmox, and VMware virtualized environments Maintain and evolve monitoring, alerting, and log aggregation infrastructure (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, Loki/Alloy) Systems & Services Provide technical oversight for critical services including mail infrastructure (SMTP/IMAP, filtering, delivery), DNS (authoritative and recursive), billing and provisioning systems, and internal APIs and tooling Ensure systems meet the operational requirements of an ISP serving residential and business subscribers Evaluate and guide architectural decisions on service reliability, scalability, and maintainability Security & Compliance Define and enforce standards for access management, change control, secrets management, and system hardening Drive continuous improvement of the organization’s default security posture and incident response capabilities Support audit a…