Engineering Manager, Desktop Native
Bitwarden is the trusted identity security leader for millions of users worldwide, empowering enterprises, developers, and individuals to securely manage and share sensitive information anywhere. Bitwarden makes it easy for all users to extend robust security across their devices with password management, secrets management, and passwordless and passkey innovations. The company is headquartered in Santa Barbara, California with team members located across the globe. Learn more at bitwarden.com.
About the Role
As we establish our India Engineering Center of Excellence (COE), we are looking for an experienced Engineering Manager who can lead and grow the Desktop Native team. As the Engineering Manager for the Desktop Native team, you will lead a small, focused team that owns desktop autofill and native OS integrations, including the SSH agent, Autotype, and the DuckDuckGo integration, delivering deep operating-system integration across Windows, macOS, and Linux.
This role is based in India.
What You Will Do
- Hire, develop, and retain a strong team of engineers
- Stay hands-on: review pull requests, and participate directly in the design and evolution of native integrations and the shared Rust SDK, including language bindings and FFI
- Guide the team's technical direction across the SSH agent, Autotype, native passkeys, and the DuckDuckGo integration, and across OS-level APIs on Windows, macOS, and Linux
- Set and report on measurable goals and objectives for the team
- Facilitate team ceremonies including weekly syncs, backlog refinements, retrospectives, and sprint planning
- Monitor in-flight work to identify blocked items, proactively drive resolution, and provide contextual updates outside of the team to the rest of the organization
- Own escalation and triage for production issues, community-reported bugs, and enterprise customer escalations related to autofill behavior and desktop integrations
- Maintain a healthy, sprint-ready backlog by prioritizing bugs and tech debt alongside feature work and ensuring all items are well-defined with accurate descriptions, technical breakdowns, and designs prior to refinement
- Serve as the primary liaison between your engineering team and Design, Product, Architecture, and other engineering teams, fielding cross-functional questions and maintaining alignment on priorities
- Collaborate with stakeholders across the organization to synthesize requests into prioritized, actionable work
- Continuously identify friction points in team processes and develop solutions to improve efficiency, quality, and developer experience
- Create an inclusive environment where teamwork and collaboration are valued
- Conduct regular 1:1s, develop individualized performance goals and growth plans, and identify stretch opportunities to support each engineer's career progression
- Perform annual or semi-annual performance reviews when required
What You'll Bring
- 5-8 years of demonstrated experience leading engineering teams or complex cross-functional product engineering initiatives within a software engineering organization.
- Strong production Rust experience, with 4-6+ years overall backend/systems engineering experience, including FFI and language bindings
- Native desktop application experience, interfacing directly with OS-level APIs on Windows, macOS, or Linux
- Experience with Electron, TypeScript, and other web tech for cross-platform desktop applications and web clients
- Ability to coach engineers on systems-level design, code quality, and security-sensitive development
- Experience working in globally distributed Product Engineering, GCC, or Center of Excellence environments along with managing distributed or cross-regional teams, including working across time zones.
- Strong understanding of Agile software development, modern engineering practices, and product delivery lifecycles.
- Ability to communicate effectively with Engineering, Product, Design, and executive stakeholders.
- Strong problem-solving, prioritization, and decision-making skills with a continuous improvement mindset.
- Excellent communication skills, with experience representing a team's work to leadership and stakeholders outside the team.
- Experience with specific tools like Jira, Confluence, or similar project management platforms preferred with AI tooling for development and workflow support (Claude Code or similar).
Success in This Role
You'll thrive in this position if you:
- Lead through influence, collaboration, and trust.
- Bring structure without introducing unnecessary processes.
- Balance strategic thinking with hands-on execution.
- Create clarity across complex, cross-functional initiatives.
- Enjoy building teams, developing people, and enabling engineering excellence.
- Are energized by helping establish and scale a world-class Engineering organization.
Why Join Us
This is an opportunity to play a foundational role in shaping our India Engineering COE from the ground up.
Our user community loves us and we love them. Come to work each day with a sense of purpose as we bring a more secure internet experience to everyone from our friends and family to the world’s largest organizations.
Become an expert. You’ll get immersed in the prominent technology markets of security and open source software. You'll work alongside talented global teams, solve meaningful engineering challenges, influence how we scale our engineering organization & contribute to products used by customers around the world.
If you're passionate about building exceptional teams, enabling engineering excellence, and making a lasting impact within a fast-growing engineering company, we'd love to hear from you.
Equal Opportunity Employer
We are committed to fostering an inclusive workplace where everyone can do their best work. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds and make employment decisions based on skills, experience, qualifications, and business needs.
