As an Engineering Manager at Ping Identity, your day-to-day responsibilities will bridge the gap between business strategy and hands-on engineering execution.

You will lead a team of 6 to 12 software engineers, taking ownership of their career growth, performance evaluations, and daily task allocation. You will foster an environment where engineers can do their best work, protecting them from external distractions while ensuring they remain accountable for their deliverables.

In addition to people management, you will drive the agile delivery process. This involves facilitating sprint planning, standups, retrospectives, and backlog grooming. You will partner closely with Product Managers to define technical requirements, estimate effort, and establish realistic launch dates for new features and platform improvements.

Operational excellence is also a major part of the role. You will oversee the reliability, security, and performance of the services your team owns. This includes participating in on-call rotations as an escalation point, ensuring robust monitoring and alerting are in place, and leading post-mortem investigations when production incidents occur.

Successful candidates must bring a robust blend of technical background, leadership experience, and strategic thinking to the table.

Must-Have Qualifications

• Engineering Leadership – 3+ years of experience directly managing software engineering teams in an agile environment.
• Technical Foundation – A strong background as a software engineer, with deep understanding of modern languages (e.g., Java, Go, C#) and cloud-native architectures (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
• Identity & Security Domain Knowledge – Practical familiarity with security best practices, IAM standards (OAuth, SAML, OIDC), and secure software development lifecycles (SSDLC).
• Communication Skills – Exceptional verbal and written communication skills, with a proven ability to present complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.

Nice-to-Have Qualifications

• Enterprise SaaS Experience – Experience managing teams that build highly available, multi-tenant enterprise SaaS applications.
• Scale and Modernization – A track record of successfully guiding teams through monolith-to-microservices migrations or cloud transformation initiatives.
• Advanced Security Certifications – Professional certifications in security or cloud architecture (e.g., CISSP, AWS Certified Solutions Architect).

Q: How technical is the Engineering Manager interview at Ping Identity? A: It is highly technical. While you won't necessarily be asked to write code on a whiteboard, you will face deep system design questions and are expected to lead a technical presentation. You must prove you can credibly evaluate architecture and guide senior engineers.

Q: What is the typical timeline for the hiring process? A: The process generally takes 4 to 6 weeks from the initial recruiter screen to a final offer. However, candidates have occasionally reported longer timelines due to internal planning or restructuring phases. It is wise to check in regularly with your recruiter for updates.

Q: How does Ping Identity evaluate negotiation and salary alignment? A: Compensation ranges are competitive, but Ping Identity values candidates who demonstrate strong alignment with the role and company mission throughout the process. Ensure you handle salary negotiations professionally, transparently, and with clear data-backed justification to maintain a collaborative partnership with the hiring team.

Q: What is the remote/hybrid work policy for Engineering Managers? A: Policy varies by team and location. Many engineering roles are remote-friendly or hybrid, but this should be clarified during your initial recruiter call to ensure alignment with your preferences.

To set yourself apart during the Ping Identity interview loop, keep these strategic tips in mind:

• Express Explicit Enthusiasm: Throughout the interview process, make sure your passion for the identity security space and the specific team is clear. Expressing genuine excitement about solving complex security challenges at scale leaves a highly positive impression on the hiring panel.
• Prepare for the Presentation Stage: Treat the presentation round like an actual system design review. Ensure your slides are clean, focus on architectural trade-offs, and be ready to defend your decisions under questioning from senior technical staff.
• Emphasize Collaboration Over Control: When discussing your management style, focus on how you empower your team to make decisions rather than dictating solutions. Ping Identity values collaborative leaders who build autonomous, high-performing teams.

• Master the STAR Method: For all behavioral questions, structure your answers using the Situation, Task, Action, and Result framework. Quantify your results wherever possible (e.g., "reduced deployment times by 30%" or "improved sprint predictability by 15%").

Securing an Engineering Manager role at Ping Identity is an exceptional opportunity to lead teams at the forefront of cybersecurity. The position offers a unique combination of high-scale technical challenges, strategic product influence, and the chance to shape a modern engineering culture. By demonstrating deep technical credibility, a servant-leadership mindset, and operational rigor, you can stand out as a premier candidate.

As you prepare, focus on refining your system architecture knowledge, practicing your technical presentation, and structuring your behavioral examples. Approach the interview loop as a collaborative dialogue, showing the panel not just what you have built, but how you lead, inspire, and grow the people around you.

The salary range shown above reflects the base compensation for this level of leadership at Ping Identity. When preparing your final expectations, consider the full compensation package, including equity and benefits, and ensure your discussions are grounded in the value you bring to the organization. For more detailed interview preparation materials, community insights, and company-specific resources, explore the additional tools available on Dataford.