At a Glance
- Tasks: Lead a dynamic product engineering team while still coding and shaping the future of our product.
- Company: Join a cutting-edge AI research company focused on innovative solutions and team collaboration.
- Benefits: Enjoy competitive salary, unlimited vacation, flexible hours, and comprehensive health benefits.
- Other info: Be part of a small, agile team with significant growth opportunities and a supportive culture.
- Why this job: Make a real impact in AI safety while growing your leadership skills in a fast-paced environment.
- Qualifications: Strong engineering background with people management experience and a passion for coding.
The predicted salary is between 63000 - 77000 £ per year.
We are building Watcher, a coding agent security product. Watcher is deployed in production and monitors billions of agent tokens per month across engineering teams at agent-building scale-ups and multinational enterprises. We are now hiring our first dedicated Engineering Manager to lead the product engineering team. We are looking for a strong hands-on engineer who still ships code, and can own both the people management and the execution of the product engineering team. This is a player-coach role. Today, you will spend most of your time managing and coordinating, but still ship code. As the team grows, you’ll transition towards 100% leadership and management. The team is small today and is growing fast, so you will have significant say in shaping the team, the process, and the product, and your scope will grow with the team. You will report directly to Marius (CEO), who will own Watcher’s product direction and roadmap.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
- Execution and delivery management (~40%)
- Own the team's planning and tracking. Turn goals and customer commitments into concrete, well-scoped tickets with clear owners.
- Run the operating rhythm (planning, standups or async equivalents, retros).
- Track dependencies between product engineering, monitoring research, and infrastructure/security work, and proactively resolve conflicts.
- Translate between researchers and product engineers. Turn research outputs (new monitors, backtesting results) into scoped, prioritized engineering work.
- Track customer commitments (integration timelines, requested features, incident follow-ups) and coordinate releases, testing, documentation, and customer communication.
- Surface risks and slippage early, and proactively give Marius (CEO) an accurate, always-current picture of status.
- People management (~30%)
- Directly manage the product engineers. Run regular 1on1s, give direct and actionable feedback, and own their growth, performance, and wellbeing.
- Own performance management end to end. Set clear expectations, recognize strong work, and address underperformance early and honestly.
- Drive hiring for the team. Own the pipeline together with ops, run interview loops, close candidates, and onboard new engineers so they ship in their first weeks.
- Protect the team's focus. Shield engineers from thrash, keep meetings minimal, and make sure priorities are stable enough to execute against.
- Hands-on engineering (~30%)
- Ship code yourself. Features, bug fixes, internal tooling, and prototypes, primarily in Python and TypeScript.
- Set the technical bar, make architecture decisions, review code and establish norms, and release and incident processes.
- Build tooling that makes the team faster, including AI-assisted tooling for your own job (status reporting, ticket triage, ramp-up docs).
JOB REQUIREMENTS
Must-haves
- Strong engineering background. You worked as a software engineer for at least 4 years before managing. You still ship production code today.
- People management experience. You have hired, onboarded and managed small teams of engineers directly, or you have been a tech lead who de facto did this for at least 2 years.
- Execution ownership. You have run delivery for a multi-person engineering effort, turning goals into tickets, tracking them to completion, and being accountable for the outcome.
- High agency. You see what the team needs and do it without being asked.
- Direct communication. You give and take blunt feedback, address problems with people early and kindly.
- Startup pace. You are excited about a fast-moving environment, comfortable with ambiguity and changing priorities.
- Comfortable leveraging AI heavily for management, coordination, and coding work.
Strong nice-to-haves
- Experience coordinating between research and engineering, or shipping products with an ML/research component.
- Customer-facing delivery experience, e.g. enterprise integrations, deployment projects, or technical account work.
BENEFITS
- This role offers market competitive salary, equity, and competitive benefits.
- Flexible work hours and schedule.
- Unlimited vacation.
- Unlimited sick leave.
- Up to 6 months of paid parental leave.
- Comprehensive health, dental and vision insurance.
- Retirement savings with competitive employer matching.
- Lunch, dinner, and snacks are provided for all employees on workdays.
- Paid work trips, including staff retreats, business trips, and relevant conferences.
- A yearly $1,000 (USD) professional development budget.
- Relocation support and visa fees (if applicable).
LOGISTICS
- Time Allocation: Full-time.
- Location: This is an in-person role working out of our London or San Francisco office.
- Visa sponsorship: We sponsor visas in both the UK and US.
ABOUT THE TEAM
The product team consists of product engineers and research scientists. Marius Hobbhahn (CEO) advises the team. Furthermore, you will interact with our other SWEs and researchers.
HOW TO APPLY
Please complete the application form with your CV. The provision of a cover letter is neither required nor encouraged.
Engineering Manager (Product) employer: Apollo Research
At Apollo Research, we pride ourselves on being an exceptional employer, offering a dynamic work culture that fosters innovation and collaboration. Our London office provides a vibrant environment where engineers can thrive, with benefits such as unlimited vacation, flexible working hours, and a strong focus on professional development. As an Engineering Manager, you'll have the unique opportunity to shape a growing team while remaining hands-on in coding, ensuring both personal and team growth in a fast-paced, supportive setting.
