Manager, Software Engineering

DLB Associates

5h • $120,750 - $148,313 • Remote

About The Position

AI2IO is seeking a Manager, Software Engineering to lead engineers, strengthen team capability, and create the organizational conditions for sustainable software delivery. This is a formal people-management role responsible for performance, development, staffing, workforce planning, team effectiveness, hiring, onboarding, retention, and the management systems that support a growing engineering organization.

The Manager partners with Software Engineer Technical Leads, Architects, Project Managers, Product Owners, Business Analysts, and the Director, Software Engineering. Technical Leads retain team-level technical direction, Architects retain cross-team platform authority, and Project Managers retain integrated delivery coordination. The Manager brings enough technical depth to understand risk and ask informed questions while focusing primarily on people, capacity, organizational support, management escalation, and the environment in which engineering teams perform.

The role begins with complete ownership of people leadership and the delivery environment for assigned teams, then progresses toward broader organizational effectiveness, management-system adoption, leadership-pipeline development, and readiness for larger engineering-organization scope. The Manager builds team capability, supports sustainable delivery, maintains workforce and succession plans, leads structured hiring and onboarding, improves management practices, and contributes to strategic people leadership. Travel may be up to 5%, including travel to any or all 50 U.S. states.

Requirements

• At least 8 years of professional software engineering or closely related technical-delivery experience, including at least 2 years of formal people management within a software organization.
• Demonstrated experience managing performance, providing difficult feedback, recognizing strong contributions, developing talent, and applying fair career expectations.
• Experience conducting performance reviews, promotion assessments, career calibration, and documented performance-improvement processes.
• Ability to build healthy, capable software teams while preserving the authority of Technical Leads, Architects, Product Owners, and Project Managers.
• Experience with workforce and capacity planning, skill-gap assessment, succession planning, and evidence-based staffing recommendations.
• Experience defining roles, conducting structured interviews, selecting candidates, and improving onboarding and retention practices.
• Sufficient technical depth to engage credibly with engineers and technical leaders, evaluate delivery and operational risk, and understand tradeoffs without directing implementation.
• Experience partnering on delivery and operational risk, cross-team dependencies, organizational blockers, and sustainable workload management.
• Demonstrated success leading organizational change and adopting improved management or team-operating practices.
• Experience managing distributed or remote software teams and communicating effectively across technical, product, delivery, and organizational audiences.
• Ability to handle confidential employee information responsibly and partner effectively with HR or people-operations functions.
• Excellent interpersonal, written, verbal, coaching, facilitation, conflict-resolution, and organizational judgment.
• Remote work from within the United States; travel may be up to 5%.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Information Systems, Business, or Organizational Leadership, or equivalent experience, preferred.

Nice To Haves

• Prior experience as a Software Engineer Technical Lead, senior software engineer, or comparable technical leader.
• Experience developing other managers or leading across multiple engineering teams.
• Experience with Azure DevOps, Microsoft Azure, C#/.NET, ASP.NET Blazor, SQL Server, Microsoft Graph API, or adjacent enterprise software platforms.
• Formal or informal project-management experience that strengthens sequencing, dependency management, risk visibility, and cross-team coordination without replacing the dedicated Project Manager role.
• Experience contributing to compensation planning, career-framework design, organizational design, or department-level workforce strategy.
• Relevant management, coaching, Agile, project-management, or technical certifications.

Responsibilities

• Manage assigned engineers through regular one-on-ones, clear role expectations, timely feedback, performance reviews, professional-development planning, and ongoing support.
• Provide recognition and developmental feedback throughout the year, and address sustained performance concerns through clear expectations, documented feedback, support plans, follow-through, and appropriate processes.
• Connect individual goals to assignments, coaching, learning, mentoring, and increased ownership; explain individual-contributor and management career paths and assess readiness fairly.
• Identify recurring skill gaps and coordinate learning, pairing, role assignments, mentoring, or hiring plans to strengthen team capability.
• Develop potential Technical Leads and Managers, distribute ownership and capability, reduce key-person risks, and create credible succession options.
• Ensure assigned teams have suitable staffing, capability, role clarity, decision pathways, tools, and organizational support for committed work.
• Partner with Technical Leads and Project Managers to understand delivery health, technical risk, dependencies, capacity limitations, and recovery needs without taking over their responsibilities.
• Arrange management intervention for material delivery problems, including staffing changes, priority escalation, cross-team negotiation, or leadership decisions.
• Review delays, incidents, rework, quality concerns, and support burdens to identify organizational, staffing, or capability improvements; protect teams from sustained overload and incompatible commitments.
• Maintain clear partnership boundaries with Technical Leads, Architects, Project Managers, Product Owners, and Business Analysts, and escalate unresolved issues through appropriate leadership paths with evidence and recommended options.
• Establish team practices that support candid discussion of risks, uncertainty, mistakes, disagreements, workload concerns, and differing viewpoints without retaliation or individual blame.
• Respond to indicators of conflict, workload imbalance, escalation failures, attrition concerns, or reluctance to raise delivery problems; address employee matters through appropriate management and people-process channels.
• Maintain dependable communication rhythms and appropriate confidentiality while ensuring leaders receive information needed to address material organizational risk.
• Maintain a current view of capacity, critical skills, experience distribution, succession risk, key-person dependencies, and anticipated staffing needs.
• Develop hiring and internal-development plans that address capability gaps; identify succession options and provide evidence-based staffing, role-design, and capacity recommendations to the Director, Software Engineering.
• Coordinate temporary staffing or responsibility changes transparently when coverage across teams is needed.
• Partner with the Director on workforce planning and hiring; define capability needs, role requirements, interview plans, evaluation criteria, and recommended priorities.
• Lead structured and equitable selection processes, calibrate interviewers, document evidence, and make candidate recommendations within assigned authority.
• Own consistent onboarding expectations, including role clarity, access, relationships, learning objectives, 30/60/90-day plans, and regular ramp check-ins; evaluate and improve onboarding based on evidence.
• Identify retention risks early and coordinate appropriate responses with the Director and organizational partners.
• Lead adoption of improved performance-management, career-development, hiring, onboarding, workforce-planning, and team-operating practices; define transitions, communications, enablement, governance, and success measures.
• Evaluate whether adopted practices improve clarity, fairness, staffing effectiveness, internal growth, leadership continuity, and organizational sustainability.
• Identify patterns across engineering teams and coordinate improvements with peer Managers and relevant technical, product, delivery, and organizational leaders.
• Improve role clarity, escalation pathways, shared staffing practices, cross-team resource coordination, and management consistency; simplify or retire practices that do not produce useful outcomes.
• Partner with the Director and organizational partners on hiring strategy, compensation planning, career frameworks, workforce design, culture programs, and organizational change.
• Translate organizational priorities into team capability, staffing, development, communication, and operating plans; advise leadership on people and organizational implications of delivery commitments, technical investments, reorganizations, and capability changes.
• Represent team capacity, capability, succession, and organizational risks in department planning with concise evidence and decision-ready recommendations.
• Steward confidential employee and organizational information responsibly.
• Demonstrate leadership across multiple teams or a substantial engineering area; develop other Managers and Technical Leads and sustain results through those leaders.
• Expand ownership of workforce, succession, organizational design, management systems, and department-level capability planning, translating strategy into staffing, operating, investment, capability, and leadership-development plans.
• Perform other related duties as assigned.

Benefits

• Choice of comprehensive medical plans, including two PPO-style plans and a high-deductible health plan with HSA option.
• Flexible spending accounts (FSA).
• Dental and vision plans.
• Medical, dental, and vision benefits for spouses or domestic partners and dependent children up to age 26.
• 401(k) with company match and self-directed brokerage account option.
• PTO, including additional paid time off during the last week of the year.
• Company-paid life insurance coverage for employees and eligible dependents.
• Short- and long-term disability and AD&D coverage.
• Professional development opportunities, tuition reimbursement, and professional licensing assistance.
• Paid parental leave after one year of employment.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Manager