About the Engineering Manager role
An Engineering Manager leads a team of software engineers, owning both the people and the delivery. They hire and grow engineers, run planning and prioritization with product partners, unblock the team daily, and stay close enough to the technical work to make sound judgment calls on architecture, quality, and risk. The output of a great Engineering Manager is a team that ships reliably and keeps getting better.
Expectations vary by company, so be explicit about the balance you want. Some organizations expect managers to still write code regularly; others expect zero coding and full focus on people and process. Team size matters too: managing five engineers on one product is a different job from managing twelve across two squads. State the team size, the product area, and the coding expectation clearly.
This is a leadership role for internal product development, distinct from an IT Manager who runs company infrastructure and support. When evaluating candidates, weigh evidence of grown engineers, improved delivery, and honest handling of underperformance more heavily than the prestige of past employers.
Engineering Manager job description template
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Job brief
We are hiring an Engineering Manager to lead a team and own what it delivers. You will hire and develop engineers, run planning with our product partners, remove the obstacles in front of the team, and stay close enough to the work to make good calls on architecture, quality, and risk.
This suits somebody who measures themselves by the team's output rather than their own, has had the difficult performance conversation and handled it well, and still knows enough to tell a plausible technical plan from a wishful one.
Responsibilities
- Manage, coach, and develop a team of software engineers through regular one-on-ones and feedback
- Own hiring for the team, from defining roles to interviewing and closing candidates
- Partner with product managers on roadmap planning, scoping, and prioritization
- Own delivery: set realistic commitments, track progress, and remove blockers
- Guide technical decisions and review architecture proposals with senior engineers
- Uphold engineering quality standards, including code review, testing, and operational readiness
- Run performance reviews, set growth plans, and address underperformance directly
- Manage on-call health, incident response, and post-incident learning for the team's services
- Communicate status, risks, and trade-offs clearly to leadership and stakeholders
- Improve team processes continuously, from planning rituals to deployment practices
Requirements and skills
- Several years building software before moving into leading it
- Has delivered predictably with a team, through more than one project
- Has hired engineers and run technical interviews that produced good decisions
- Coaches engineers and handles performance honestly, including the hard cases
- Technically current enough to evaluate architecture and quality trade-offs
- Communicates as clearly with engineers as with the people funding the work
- Comfortable with agile delivery and how modern teams actually ship
- A computer science degree, or the practical experience that replaced one
Nice to have
- Experience managing managers or leading multiple squads
- Experience scaling a team through rapid hiring or reorganization
- Background in your product domain or industry
- Experience owning services in production, including on-call and reliability practices
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