Engineering Manager

topi

5d•Hybrid

About The Position

We are looking for an Engineering Manager with a strong backend engineering background to lead one of our engineering teams, combining technical depth with people leadership in a senior, product-minded team that values collaboration, impact, and continuous learning. We're a distributed engineering team working across Europe (within +/- 1 hour of CET); topi is headquartered in Berlin. Our engineering organization is organized into small, focused teams of senior engineers. You'll lead one of these teams day-to-day: setting direction, coaching engineers, partnering with Product and Design, and being accountable for delivery. This is a hands-on management role. We expect you to write and ship production code alongside your team, and to be deep in technical discussions, code reviews, system design conversations, and architectural decisions, especially on the backend. Your judgment shapes both how the team works and what it builds. You'll join an experienced and supportive engineering leadership team where you'll have a significant voice in shaping the organization, the engineering culture, and the product itself.

Requirements

Strong backend engineering background.
At least 6+ years of professional software engineering experience in a production environment.
Strong backend track record: building, scaling, and operating server-side systems and APIs in production.
At least 3+ years managing engineering teams of 4 or more people, including 1:1s, performance management, hiring, and team-level delivery.
Hands-on production experience in Go or a comparable backend language (e.g., Java, Kotlin, C#, Rust, Scala).
Backend fundamentals to lead technical discussions, weigh in on system design, and earn the trust of senior engineers.
Motivated to ship code in React/TypeScript frontend and engage in frontend discussions.
Clear, direct, kind communication style.
Ability to give feedback well and receive it gracefully.
Ability to explain complex trade-offs to engineers, product partners, and executive stakeholders.
Favor clarity over process, autonomy over control, and outcomes over output.
Comfortable in a flat, senior-heavy team where authority comes from credibility, not title.
Fluent English.
Ability to explain complex technical trade-offs to non-technical stakeholders.

Nice To Haves

Grown a team through a phase of scale or change.

Responsibilities

Lead one of the small, focused teams of senior engineers day-to-day.
Set direction for the team.
Coach engineers.
Partner with Product and Design.
Be accountable for team delivery.
Write and ship production code alongside the team.
Participate in technical discussions, code reviews, system design conversations, and architectural decisions, especially on the backend.
Shape the team's working methods and what it builds.
Have a significant voice in shaping the organization, engineering culture, and product.
Own the outcomes of the team, including quality, pace, and direction, without becoming the bottleneck.
Coach a team of mostly senior engineers.
Set a clear bar for excellence.
Create the conditions for engineers to do their best work.
Partner with Product and Design to shape roadmaps, balance trade-offs, and turn ambiguous strategy into shipped features.
Run lightweight, effective rituals (1:1s, retros, planning).
Give and receive honest feedback.
Protect focus and sustainability.
Treat AI coding agents as collaborators.
Own every line of code that ships under your name, whether typed by you or an agent.
Deep-dive into agent workflows and bring judgment to turn agent output into production-grade code.