At a Glance
- Tasks: Lead a dynamic engineering team, ensuring high-quality code and effective communication.
- Company: Join a forward-thinking tech company that values innovation and collaboration.
- Benefits: Enjoy competitive salary, comprehensive health benefits, and flexible remote work options.
- Other info: Be part of a supportive culture with opportunities for professional growth and development.
- Why this job: Make a real impact by driving architectural standards and mentoring talented engineers.
- Qualifications: Proven experience in engineering management and strong communication skills are essential.
Location: Fully Remote
Reports To: VP of Technology
Department: Product Development
FLSA Status: Exempt
Essential Job Responsibilities
- Stay hands-on: review pull requests, take real work, and know the codebase well enough to see where something is quietly going off course.
- Set the code quality and review bar across the team: non-author review on everything, patterns applied consistently, and no merges that skip review.
- Drive high and consistent architecture standards in partnership with the Group Architect.
- Own the team's commitments, so everyone carries a named owner, a reliable date, and a high-quality definition of done, with date adjustments always raised before the date arrives.
- Produce estimates with stated assumptions and a date the estimate gets refined, even under real uncertainty.
- Keep the systems of record current so status for the area is visible without anyone having to ask or chase.
- Run the team's ceremonies (planning, refinement, standup, retrospective) so each session exits with decisions, owners, and dates rather than open questions.
- Own the resolution of handoff items across development, QA, DevOps, and Product so work never stalls in an unowned gap.
- Manage external development partner contractors alongside the in-house team so their build integrates cleanly and no gap between teams stalls the work.
- Leverage agentic coding tools to audit code quality and drive efficiency without creating disorganization and fragility in the codebase.
- Manage the engineers as people: regular one-on-ones, coaching against what motivates each of them, honest performance feedback, expectations in writing when they are needed, and follow-through on both praise and consequences.
- Turn expert objection into forward motion: when a senior engineer says a plan will not work, drive to the alternative they can support, with a date and an owner.
- Ramp new engineers to independent contribution quickly and hold the team together through change.
Compensation Range & Benefits
$140,000 – $190,000 base compensation and bonus eligible, commensurate with experience. For a candidate who comes in at the Director of Engineering level, the range could be higher.
Benefits include Medical, Dental, and Vision coverage; Life insurance (Voluntary Term and Whole Life); Voluntary Long Term Disability; paid time off and paid holidays; 401(k); Employee Assistance Program (EAP); and Maternity Leave.
Requirements
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
You must possess all four qualifications listed below. Candidates who possess only two or three qualifications will not be considered for the role.
- You communicate so well that it is where your team's efficiency comes from.
- You write the update nobody must decode; you run the meeting that converges instead of sprawling, and you can carry the same message up to leadership and down to an engineer without either one losing the thread. This is listed first deliberately: at this team size, communication is the skill that compounds, and it is where most of the available efficiency lives.
Qualifying Experiences Include
- A recurring written or verbal status practice you personally established that replaced people chasing each other for information, and what changed measurably once it was running.
- A moment you had to deliver the same difficult message in both directions, to an executive and to the engineer whose work was affected, and how you kept both conversations honest.
- You have made a team's delivery trustworthy, and you can show the before and after.
- You have taken over a team whose dates were vague, slipping, or silently missed, and you built the operating system that fixed it: named owners, real definitions of done, a standing status surface, and re-forecasts that arrive before the deadline rather than after it. You can walk through the actual status surface you ran, and the measured improvement that followed, not a philosophy of delivery.
Qualifying Experiences Include
- A team you inherited where delivery was not trusted, the specific mechanisms you installed, and the measured improvement in predictability that followed.
- A high-stakes commitment that was going to slip, where you re-forecast early and took options up and out before the date, so nothing arrived as a surprise.
- You have managed senior, strong-willed engineers, and kept them.
- You have been the people manager for engineers more tenured or technically deeper than you, including at least one who did not want to be managed. You know how to convert 'this will not work here' into a written alternative the expert will own, how to set expectations in writing, and how to have the hard conversation while it is still a coaching conversation. You have carried a team through a reorganization or a leadership change with retention intact.
Qualifying Experiences Include
- A senior engineer who was blocking or disengaged from a change, the specific way you moved them to constructive ownership, and what happened to the team afterward.
- A reorganization or leadership transition you led a team through, what you did deliberately so it read as investment rather than threat, and the retention outcome.
- You still have the technical depth to see problems before they surface.
- You built and shipped software before you managed, and you have kept enough depth to be useful in the code today. You can follow a principal-level argument, ask the question that exposes the real tradeoff, and tell a genuine constraint from a preference dressed up as one. You know which calls are yours (priorities, dates, process, people) and which belong to architecture and platform, and you back those standards with your authority rather than competing with them.
Qualifying Experiences Include
- A technical dispute between senior engineers that you refereed to a durable decision: how you separated the engineering substance from the ownership question, who made the final call, and why it stuck.
- A quality standard you enforced against resistance from someone senior, what it cost in the moment, and what it bought the team afterward.
Experience anchor.
Two or more years as a front-line engineering manager, on top of hands-on engineering experience, with a team you can describe concretely: 'I managed six developers, here is what we shipped, here is what I changed about how we worked.' This is not a seat for a strong individual contributor stepping into management for the first time. Treat the anchor as orientation rather than a hard gate; the four qualifications above are the real bar, and demonstrated delivery substitutes for any specific credential.
Buy-in on AI-assisted engineering is required. A track record of shipping AI features is not. You do not need to have built AI products, but you do need to already believe that AI-assisted development changes how software gets built, and to be someone we can hand an agentic workflow to without a blank stare.
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Experience in a build-it, test-it, own-it, operate-it model, where the team carried its own services into production rather than handing them to a separate operations group.
- Experience coordinating an external or offshore development partner alongside an in-house team.
- Current hands-on ability in our stack: TypeScript (primary) and Java; Vue and React; AWS (ECS, Lambda, Aurora, DocumentDB, EventBridge, SQS, S3); PostgreSQL, DocumentDB, Redis, and SQL Server in the legacy estate.
- Clean architecture, Domain-Driven Design, event-driven systems, or SOLID discipline held across a team in production.
- Having managed through a reorganization, a leadership change, or a legacy-to-modern replatform.
- Prior work in a regulated industry such as legal, healthcare, or financial services.
Engineering Manager employer: Planet Depos
As an Engineering Manager at our fully remote company, you will thrive in a culture that prioritises communication and collaboration, ensuring that every team member feels valued and empowered. We offer competitive compensation, comprehensive benefits including medical and dental coverage, and ample opportunities for professional growth, all while working in a flexible environment that embraces innovation and supports your career development. Join us to lead a talented team and make a meaningful impact in the tech industry from the comfort of your own home.
StudySmarter Expert Advice🤫
We think this is how you could land Engineering Manager
✨Join Local Tech Meetups
Get out there and mingle with fellow developers by joining local tech meetups. It’s a fantastic way to meet people who might be working at Planet Depos or know someone who does. Plus, you can pick up some trendy tech skills and trends while you're at it!
✨Contribute to Open Source Projects
Show off your coding chops by jumping into open-source projects. Not only does this give you practical experience, but it also gets you noticed in the dev community. You'll create a killer portfolio that speaks volumes about your skills to Planet Depos.
✨Tap into Online Developer Communities
Don’t underestimate the power of online developer communities like GitHub, Stack Overflow, and even Reddit. Participate in discussions, share your projects, and build your visibility. We can often find opportunities through these channels that can lead to a full-time gig at companies like Planet Depos.
✨Explore Job Boards Specifically for Tech Roles
Keep your eyes peeled on job boards that focus on tech roles. Sites like TechCareers or Stack Overflow Jobs can often have listings for companies like Planet Depos that might not show up on broader job sites. Make it a habit to check these regularly, and don’t hesitate to apply directly through our website!
We think you need these skills to ace Engineering Manager
Some tips for your application 🫡
Show off your coding skills:When applying for a software engineering role, it's super important to showcase your coding skills. Make sure your CV includes your tech stack, any relevant programming languages you’re comfortable with, and examples of projects you've worked on. If you have a GitHub profile, link it up! We love to see code in action.
Tailor your portfolio:For a full-time role, we’d expect to see some solid examples of your work in your portfolio. Make sure to include at least two or three projects that highlight your problem-solving skills and your ability to work with different technologies. Focus on the projects that are most relevant to the position at Planet Depos.
Craft a killer cover letter:Your cover letter is your chance to stand out—make it personal! Explain why you want to work at Planet Depos and how your skills align with the role. Show us your passion for software development. We dig enthusiastic candidates who understand the value of collaboration and continuous learning!
Be clear and concise:When it comes to writing your CV and cover letter, clarity is key. Avoid jargon that could confuse us and stick to simple, direct language. Highlight your achievements with quantifiable results where possible, and keep everything easy to read. A well-organised application goes a long way!
How to prepare for a job interview at Planet Depos
✨Brush Up on Your Coding Skills
For a full-time software engineering role, it's crucial that we stay sharp with our coding abilities. Expect technical questions that might involve solving problems on the spot or discussing algorithms. Practise on platforms like LeetCode or HackerRank to get comfortable with the types of questions that often come up.
✨Know Your Tools and Frameworks
Make sure we’re well-acquainted with the tools and technologies listed in the job description. Familiarise ourselves with any specific frameworks or programming languages mentioned. If Planet Depos uses React or Node.js, for instance, be ready to discuss how we’ve used them in previous projects or coursework.
✨Showcase Your Projects
Bring along a portfolio that highlights our best work. This could be code samples, GitHub repositories, or any side projects we’ve built. Make sure we can talk through our thought process for each project, especially the challenges we faced and how we solved them—this shows our problem-solving skills in action.
✨Prepare for Behavioural Questions
While technical skills are key, full-time positions also require cultural fit. Be ready to discuss our previous experiences and how we handle teamwork, conflict, and deadlines. Brush up on the STAR method—Situation, Task, Action, Result—to clearly articulate our past experiences when discussing how we've contributed to a team.