Software Engineering Manager

Roles and responsibilities

• Grow and lead a team of engineers in your region
• Develop talent through coaching, mentoring, feedback, and hands-on career development
• Apply sound engineering principles and directly contribute toward your team’s goals
• Create and maintain productive relationships with stakeholders
• Set and manage expectations with other engineering teams, management, and external stakeholders
• Collaborate proactively with a distributed team and community
• Lead the ongoing development of Launchpad, the infrastructure on which great software like Ubuntu is built
• Advocate and advance modern, agile software development practices and help develop and evangelise great engineering and organisational practices
• Grow a healthy, collaborative engineering culture in line with the company values
• Actively engage with the broader leadership team
• Work from home with international travel up to 6 weeks per year for internal and external events
  
  

Who You Are

• You have experience leading a distributed team to deliver features and manage production services at scale
• You love to mentor, develop, and grow people, and have an outstanding track record of doing so
• You are knowledgeable and passionate about technology
• You have experience delivering high quality software
• You have experience designing and evolving complex distributed systems
• You have effective written and verbal communication skills
• You have solid experience working in an agile development environment

Desired candidate profile

1. Team Leadership and Management

• Team Development: Lead, mentor, and coach a team of engineers to improve their technical skills, career growth, and performance. Foster a positive and inclusive team culture.
• Recruiting and Hiring: Help build and scale the engineering team by recruiting, interviewing, and hiring new software engineers. Ensure a strong team dynamic and ensure that team members possess the necessary skills for current and future projects.
• Performance Management: Set clear performance expectations and provide regular feedback through performance reviews and one-on-one meetings. Address any performance issues or conflicts within the team.

2. Project Management and Execution

• Project Planning: Oversee project planning, including setting timelines, defining deliverables, and managing priorities. Work closely with product managers, designers, and other stakeholders to ensure requirements are clear.
• Timeline and Resource Management: Ensure projects are delivered on time and within scope. Balance resources across projects, making trade-offs when necessary to meet deadlines.
• Risk Management: Identify potential risks early in the project and work with the team to mitigate or address them. Keep stakeholders informed of any delays, roadblocks, or issues that arise.
• Agile Practices: Implement and promote agile development practices, including Scrum or Kanban, to optimize team workflow and ensure continuous delivery of high-quality software.

3. Technical Leadership

• Architecture and Design: Collaborate with senior engineers and architects to ensure that software solutions are designed in a scalable, maintainable, and performant way. Participate in technical design discussions and decision-making.
• Code Quality: Ensure that the team follows best practices for software development, including code reviews, automated testing, and continuous integration (CI). Advocate for high standards of code quality, performance, and security.
• Technical Mentorship: Provide guidance on technical challenges and ensure that engineers have the resources and support they need to overcome technical hurdles. Help junior engineers grow by sharing your expertise and experience.
• Technical Debt Management: Ensure that technical debt is properly managed, with a balance between feature development and addressing long-term maintainability concerns.

4. Collaboration with Cross-Functional Teams

• Stakeholder Communication: Act as the primary point of contact between engineering and other teams, such as product management, operations, QA, and customer support. Communicate project progress, issues, and priorities effectively to all stakeholders.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Collaborate closely with product managers to ensure that engineering work aligns with business priorities and customer needs. Work with design teams to ensure a seamless user experience.
• Customer and User Focus: Keep the end-user experience in mind during the development process, ensuring that the product being built meets customer needs and expectations.

5. Continuous Improvement and Innovation

• Process Improvement: Continuously evaluate and improve development processes to make the team more efficient. Promote the use of new tools, technologies, and methodologies to improve team performance.
• Innovation: Encourage a culture of innovation, where team members are empowered to suggest new tools, technologies, or approaches that can improve the product or development process.
• Technical Strategy: Contribute to the development of the company's technical strategy by identifying emerging technologies, industry trends, and best practices that can be adopted to improve software quality and team productivity.