THE OPPORTUNITY
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 hand-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. Everyone on the team should always know what they're supposed to be doing and whether we're on track.
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. Staying hands-on keeps your technical judgment current and your tickets realistic.
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