Engineering Manager

Recruiting From Scratch•San Francisco, CA

11d•Hybrid

About The Position

Our client is building an AI-native operating system for waste haulers, modernizing an industry that has traditionally relied on legacy software and manual workflows. The platform brings together critical business operations including CRM, billing, dispatch, routing, sales, marketing, and operational workflows into a modern software platform enhanced by AI agents. The company recently raised an $11M Series A and is scaling a small, high-performing engineering organization as it continues expanding across the waste management industry. As an Engineering Manager, you'll operate as a hands-on technical leader and right-hand to the CTO, managing a distributed engineering team while remaining deeply involved in architecture, infrastructure, security, compliance, and production software development. This is an opportunity for an engineering leader who wants to maintain a true 50/50 balance between people management and hands-on engineering while helping shape the technical foundation of a rapidly growing vertical SaaS company.

Requirements

5+ years of experience across backend software engineering and engineering management
Experience managing a team of 10 or fewer engineers
Strong hands-on software engineering background
Experience leading engineering teams while continuing to write production code
Experience working at startups or growth-stage technology companies
Experience building and operating large production systems
Experience with incident management and production reliability
Experience working with distributed or remote engineering teams
Experience partnering closely with CTOs, founders, or senior technical leadership
Experience owning technical projects from architecture through production
Experience working in B2B SaaS or business software environments preferred
Strong ownership mentality with demonstrated ability to take responsibility for technical and team outcomes
Experience operating independently in ambiguous startup environments
Strong technical communication skills
Strong people leadership and coaching ability
Strong problem-solving and architectural judgment
Strong TypeScript engineering experience
Production experience with Node.js
Production experience with PostgreSQL
Strong backend engineering fundamentals
Experience designing and operating production systems
Experience with distributed systems and scalable backend architecture
Experience with APIs and backend services
Experience managing production infrastructure
Experience monitoring production systems and engineering metrics
Ability to diagnose and troubleshoot complex production issues
Ability to make architecture decisions independently
Experience with security engineering and development best practices
Experience managing cloud infrastructure and infrastructure costs
Strong understanding of software development lifecycle and engineering practices
Ability to review and contribute to production code
Ability to balance technical debt, product velocity, reliability, and scalability
Strong system design and architecture skills
Ability to maintain hands-on coding proficiency while managing a team
Exceptional ownership and execution ability
Strong people leadership and coaching skills
Clear and concise technical communication
Ability to give and receive difficult feedback
Highly collaborative and low-ego working style
Comfortable leading distributed engineering teams
Strong technical judgment
Comfortable operating with high autonomy
Strong ability to prioritize competing technical and organizational problems
Comfortable making independent decisions
Strong product and business judgment
High execution velocity
Comfortable working in fast-paced startup environments
Strong accountability for team and system outcomes
Ability to balance management responsibilities with hands-on engineering
Comfortable working closely with founders and CTOs
Strong incident management and crisis-solving instincts
Ability to communicate technical tradeoffs clearly to non-technical stakeholders
Strong interest in vertical SaaS and complex business workflows
Excited about building software for traditionally underserved industries

Nice To Haves

Experience with multi-tenant SaaS architecture preferred
Experience leading SOC2 or comparable security/compliance initiatives preferred
Familiarity with AI agents or AI-powered software systems preferred
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field preferred
Strong technical education preferred
Equivalent practical software engineering and leadership experience accepted

Responsibilities

Manage a distributed engineering team of fewer than 10 engineers across the US, Latin America, and Europe
Own people management responsibilities including coaching, performance management, hiring, and team development
Serve as a technical right-hand to the CTO and help drive engineering execution and technical priorities
Maintain a roughly 50/50 split between hands-on software engineering and engineering management
Continue writing production code alongside the engineering team
Lead backend-heavy engineering initiatives across the platform
Drive architecture decisions for large-scale production systems
Design and improve multi-tenant architecture and customer-specific product configurations
Lead the company's SOC2 certification and security compliance initiatives
Improve security posture, engineering practices, and development processes
Establish and maintain strong engineering best practices around code quality, testing, deployment, and reliability
Manage production infrastructure and monitor system health
Own incident management processes and help improve production reliability
Monitor infrastructure costs and optimize cloud and AI-related spending
Track engineering performance metrics including releases, PRs, incidents, and production reliability
Work closely with the CTO on technical strategy and architecture
Partner with product and business teams to translate customer and operational requirements into scalable software
Help engineers make strong architectural and implementation decisions
Coach engineers through technical challenges and career development
Build a strong culture of ownership, accountability, and high-quality execution
Operate effectively with a distributed engineering organization
Make independent technical decisions in a fast-moving startup environment
Balance engineering velocity with reliability, security, and scalability
Contribute directly to critical product and infrastructure initiatives
Help scale engineering processes as the company grows
Build software for complex, industry-specific business workflows
Work closely with leadership to shape the company's long-term technical direction

Benefits

Competitive equity package
Opportunity to work directly with the CTO and founding team
True 50/50 engineering management and hands-on engineering role
Opportunity to shape the technical foundation of a rapidly growing AI-native company
High ownership over architecture, infrastructure, security, and engineering execution
Opportunity to lead SOC2 and security initiatives
Exposure to AI agents and modern AI-powered business software
Fast-growing Series A company with significant opportunity for technical leadership
Opportunity to build software for a large, underserved vertical industry
Strong influence over engineering culture and technical strategy
H-1B transfer support