Meet Barak, engineering director working in software engineering for over 25 years, who is leading teams based out of our headquarters in Menlo Park, our Seattle engineering center and recently out of the Tel Aviv office. These teams are integrating skills from different disciplines in AI and ML. Read on to find out why he chose engineering as a profession, what surprised him when he joined Facebook and what makes leading teams different here.

I have been playing with computers and programming since I was in 5th or 6th grade so getting into engineering was not a surprise at all, but with over 25 years of enjoying software engineering as my profession I can count a few “eye-opening” experiences:

1. First, I was pleasantly surprised to find out how strong 10x software engineers really are - and how much impact they can have. For me, it was a very humbling to begin my engineering career on a team where I was mentored by people that I consider software titans. The infinite number of learning experiences provided on the team felt insatiable, I couldn't get enough.

2. Second I've enjoyed learning how strong leadership can have a multiplier effect - and actually understanding the difference between Management and Leadership and how leaders can empower their teams.

3. Third I actually found out I enjoy working in startups - it's surprising because, life in a startup can be hard and risky, the odds are against you and you have practically zero supporting infrastructure (i.e. you need to wear multiple hats and do a lot by yourself) - but I loved it. I worked in two startups and the experience was amazing, we were working hard “climbing the formidable mountain” and I enjoyed every second of it.

4. Facebook - joining Facebook felt like I hit the jackpot - it is the intersection of all of the above three, this is a mix I never thought I would meet where a big company is built around an amazing group of 10x engineers, where leadership is exactly that - leadership (and not management) and the freedom to take chances and follow your intuitions to build great things is as core to the company's identity as it is in a startup.

Since October I have been working with an amazing team to establish a Machine Learning initiative for Facebook's Software Infrastructure org. We focus on building Platforms and Systems that we could not build without strong ML capabilities. We are integrating skills from different disciplines in AI and ML in order to maximize our impact on Facebook's success.

After having a successful career, taking part in amazing projects in small startups and in big companies, I assumed I was ready for the role in Facebook. When you join Facebook, you're immersed in a 2-month bootcamp, giving you time to adapt to Facebook in the best way possible, engaging in software tasks with real production systems (I changed an element on the real Facebook website in my first week) and get exposed to the culture and what it really means.

Leaving the bootcamp you know you are ready to dive into real work in Facebook and yet...once I finished bootcamp and started working with engineers and other managers I felt like I didn't fit, they were all so smart, how could I be able to add value here? I was lucky to voice these concerns to my manager, my mentor and practically anyone that was willing to listen. Believe it or not, a pattern emerged, it turns out I'm not alone, practically everyone feels this way when joining Facebook - it's called Impostor Syndrome, which is exactly how I felt at the time. Yet again, the Facebook value of being open about your concerns and weaknesses has proven to be a smart choice. The advice I got was amazing and really helped me.

In most companies, perception of an Engineering Manager role is broken into 3 parts: project management, technical leadership and people management, and in many cases the people management part is there to make sure people don't "interfere" with the other two (this is obviously very dependent on the org, the leader/manager, and the team). In Facebook the teams/engineers own the project management and the technical leadership parts, so the managers can really focus on people management and not as a side effect of the other two, but really taking the time to help engineers grow, tackle the obstacles in their way and achieve higher impact.

Working to more closely integrate AI and ML in our Software Infrastructure org is an amazing experience, it feels like we are constantly identifying new challenges and tackling them. Releasing critical services at high speed and growing to reach high adoption is a great challenge from both technical and business aspects. For me, it's like I'm given a chance to do the things I love the most, the life and blood of a startup without the hardships and fragility of startup life.

We have a lot of initiatives and teams working to bring the world closer together, but to really make an impact to the world you need to operate at a large scale. Helping more than 2 billion people connect on the Facebook app every month calls for extremely complicated systems built to operate at global scale, Facebook's Software Infrastructure org is what allows all of this to happen. Our AI work is aiming to evolve the Infra org one step further through the use of Machine Learning.

Facebook is a growing company, we are in need of strong talent in practically every aspect of the organization, engineering management is no different. If you are a strong believer in bottom-up culture, innovation and helping people around the world build community, we want to hear from you.

Take time and prepare for the interviews, don't assume you can just share your past success stories and it will work like it did in your past companies. Facebook interviews are different, each interviewer is looking for specific aspects and will explore these in depth. Above all else, brush up on your SW skills, as we expect Engineering Managers to be very skilled in software, we would explore your coding skills, system design, and your control of data structures and algorithms.

Join our engineering team, discover our opportunities here.