Software Engineering Manager

Spellbook

13d•Onsite

About The Position

We’re looking for an Engineering Manager to lead a small team building AI products for legal professionals. This is a technical leadership role with responsibility for product outcomes, engineering quality, and team performance. You’ll work closely with product and design, stay involved in architecture and implementation, and help the team make good decisions under uncertainty. You’ll also determine how coding agents and automation should change the way we develop software, based on what improves results in practice. The role includes managing and developing engineers, but it is not primarily about process or coordination. We’re looking for someone who can increase the team’s output and ambition through clear direction, sound judgment, strong technical work, and effective use of AI.

Requirements

5+ years of software development experience, including technical leadership in a startup, scale-up, or other fast-moving environment.
Strong system design and web development skills, with experience in JavaScript/TypeScript, React, Node, and AWS.
Experience leading the development and operation of production software.
Regular use of coding agents or similar AI tools, with concrete examples of improving development speed or quality.
Ability to prototype, review code, evaluate technical approaches, and make pragmatic architecture decisions.
Strong product judgment and a record of turning ambiguous customer problems into focused plans and shipped products.
Ability to balance near-term delivery with reliability, maintainability, and longer-term technical needs.
Clear communication and the ability to align engineering, product, and design around decisions and tradeoffs.
Experience coaching engineers and setting a high standard for performance without adding unnecessary process.

Nice To Haves

Experience building LLM-based products, agent workflows, or evaluation systems.
Familiarity with operating AI systems reliably and securely in production.
A track record of launching new products at scale.
Founder experience or another role with broad ownership.

Responsibilities

Work with product, design, and customer-facing teams to identify important customer problems and decide what to build.
Develop a strong understanding of how legal professionals use Spellbook through customer conversations, product data, and direct observation.
Set technical direction for the team, prioritizing work based on customer impact, business value, technical risk, and long-term platform leverage.
Lead the team through delivery and take responsibility for the quality, reliability, and results of its work.
Stay hands-on by prototyping, contributing directly to architecture and implementation, and reviewing critical code and designs.
Test new ways of working with coding agents and automation. Adopt the practices that improve speed or quality.
Define practical standards for reviewing, testing, evaluating, and operating software produced by engineers and agents.
Help engineers improve their technical judgment, product thinking, and ability to use AI effectively.
Contribute to Spellbook’s engineering strategy as AI changes how we develop software and what small teams can accomplish.