Senior Manager, Engineering

Priority Technology Holdings, LLC• Remote, US,

41d•$202,000 - $230,000•Remote

About The Position

Senior Managers at Priority lead a mix: you manage other managers (Managers or Team Leads, or both), and you often continue to manage one or more teams and their engineers directly yourself. Managing other managers is what makes this level distinct from Manager — it's the point where indirection becomes a real mode of leadership alongside the direct management you may continue to do. The scale you cover is multiple teams within an area, and the newly-yours craft is making those teams perform consistently — through the leaders you develop and the standards you hold across the scope. Your leverage flows through both modes — the leaders you grow and the team(s) you run directly. The cross-team work — making standards hold, making cross-team commitments stick, making the slowest team get help instead of blame — is the part that's newly yours. You'll also pick up the keyboard when the work genuinely calls for it; the day-to-day craft, though, is making multiple teams move together as a unit. You own three bars across the teams in your scope: the hiring bar — kept consistent across teams so every hire raises the bar where it lands; the performance bar — held for the engineers you directly manage and for the leaders under you, with the same honesty and the same early intervention; the culture bar — built deliberately on every team you cover, not assumed to propagate. You own the area's business, customer, and OKR/KPI alignment across your teams — in partnership with your peers at this level in Product Design and Product Management. You and your Product Design and Product Management peers at the multi-team scope are the area's leadership trio. Together you make sure the area's OKRs and KPIs ladder up coherently across teams and up to the workstream, and that the "why" behind the work is consistent across teams. Business fluency doesn't slip when it isn't you in the room — the Managers and Team Leads under you carry the trio partnership at team level the way you carry it at the multi-team level, because that's the standard you set and hold. You and the Staff (or Senior Staff) Software Engineers — or Software Architects — across the area's teams share accountability for those teams' customer and business outcomes. You lead through delivery, the people, the organization of the teams, and the partnerships with those Staff+ engineers needed to move those outcomes. They lead through architecture, technical direction, and engineering excellence within their teams. Multiple interlocking partnerships across the area — and those teams need them all to work. You run the semi-annual Skills & Knowledge Assessment for the engineers you directly manage; you oversee the Managers under you running it for their reports. Scores roll up into the workstream Engineering Maturity Model (EMM) score. Consistency of the assessment bar across teams is your job — Managers under you don't grade differently than you would. When the area hits a cross-team high-pressure moment — a major incident spanning teams, a multi-team escalation, a critical multi-team delivery — you're the leader the area looks to across those teams. You're on point, you stay on it until it's resolved, and you show up regardless of time of day, day of week, or weekend. You drive AI-native transformation as a consistent standard across your teams — not as an option each team adopts at its own pace. Agentic PDLC adoption is measured, coached toward, and held to the bar across the teams in your scope. Developing leaders is the new multiplier of the job — and you keep developing the engineers on the team(s) you run directly. Managers and Team Leads under you grow measurably. Engineers on the team(s) you manage directly grow into and beyond their levels, and some grow past your scope into bigger roles.

Requirements

Roughly 10–15 years of relevant experience, with real experience managing managers — not just multi-team scope, but people-managing people-managers as an active craft.
A record of leading a full team well (hiring, performance, delivery, growth) and of developing other leaders who then led well themselves.
Hybrid leadership credibility — comfort managing other managers while also running a team directly, without favoring one mode and neglecting the other.
Multi-team coordination experience — shared standards and cross-team commitments that held under pressure.
Demonstrated partnership with Product and Design peers at multi-team scope as a real trio — joint ownership of area-level OKRs and KPIs.
Comfort and credibility leading through cross-team crises — multi-team outages, cross-functional escalations, critical multi-team deliveries — regardless of hour.
Coaching and delegation as demonstrated strengths — impact through others, not presence.
Experience driving engineering-practice change (AI-native, quality, delivery) consistently across multiple teams.
Honest, direct communication — willing to have hard conversations early at both the IC and the leader level.

Nice To Haves

Experience leading multi-team engineering organizations within fintech, payments, lending, or other regulated financial systems.
A track record of measurably improving how multiple teams work together at scale — visible gains in delivery, quality, developer experience, or on-call health, sustained past your tenure.
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field — or equivalent practical experience.
Advanced degree in a relevant technical discipline (e.g., Master's or PhD).

Responsibilities

Develop the Managers and Team Leads who report to you — they grow measurably because of you; managing other managers is a real craft you actively practice.
Directly manage engineers on at least one team yourself, with the same hiring, performance, and team-health expectations as a Manager, when scope calls for it.
Keep hiring and performance bars consistent across teams in your scope.
In partnership with your peers at this level in Product Design and Product Management, own the area's understanding of the customer, the business, and the OKRs and KPIs the area's teams are measured on; make sure those OKRs and KPIs ladder up coherently.
Set and hold the standard for business fluency across teams — the Managers and Team Leads under you carry the trio partnership with their Product Design and Product Management peers at team level the way you carry it at the multi-team level.
Align delivery across teams; sequence cross-team dependencies so the commitments those teams make to business partners, stakeholders, and customers hold.
Balance investment across teams against priority — not the loudest voice; consolidate duplicated effort.
Make sure delivery, quality, and reliability practices are consistent across teams — the slowest team gets help, not blame.
Lead during cross-team high-pressure moments — major incidents that span teams, multi-team escalations, critical multi-team deliveries — regardless of time of day, day of week, or weekend.
Make sure no team in your scope has a single-human point of failure — including at the leader level.
Root-cause systemic defect patterns across team boundaries; the same incident class doesn't recur in a second team.
Run the semi-annual Skills & Knowledge Assessment for the engineers you directly manage; oversee the Managers under you running it for their reports — scores roll up into the workstream EMM score.
Drive AI-native and Agentic PDLC adoption as a standard across teams; consolidate shared tooling friction into platform tasks backed by evidence.
Keep ADR (architecture decision record) practice the norm; respect and amplify the Staff+ engineers' architectural ownership across teams.
Develop the next generation of leaders — Team Leads who become Managers, Managers who become Senior Managers.