Software Engineering Team Manager

SAIC•Flexwork, AL

5d•Remote

About The Position

SAIC is seeking a Software Engineering Team Manager to join the Joint Range Extension (JRE) software development team. This is a remote role within the U.S. You'll be leading a fully remote team that is spread across the continental United States. JRE is a combat-proven datalink gateway that plays a vital role in the defense of the U.S. and our allies by extending the reach of tactical data across the battlespace and around the globe. As the manager for this team, you'll be directly responsible for the growth and effectiveness of the engineers who build it. You will manage an established, high-performing team of 8 to 10 software engineers spanning a range of experience levels, career stages, and specialties, within the larger JRE software development organization, working closely with engineering leadership, product management, software architecture, and systems engineering. You will report to the manager of JRE software development, who is bringing this role on to put dedicated leadership closer to the engineers. The team's engineers are your direct reports, and you own their reviews, their development, and their day-to-day leadership. Expect real latitude in how you lead them, a manager who wants decisions made close to the work, and a growing share of hiring as you establish yourself. We are looking for a leader first. You should be able to hold your own in technical discussions and earn the respect of senior engineers, but your primary craft is people: developing them, aligning them, and clearing what stands in their way. You are accountable for the team that delivers the work, including its capability and engineering practices. Product management sets the team's priorities and a dedicated product owner runs sprint planning, and both will look to you as a close partner in that work.

Requirements

A Bachelors degree in computer science, software engineering, or a related field, with 9+ years of relevant experience, 7+ years for a Master's, or 4+ years for a Doctorate; relevant experience will be considered in lieu of degree
3+ years of that experience in direct people management or formal team leadership of software engineers
Must be a U.S. citizen
Must be able to obtain a Secret clearance or higher after start
Demonstrated experience directly managing software engineers, including performance reviews, career development, difficult performance conversations, and the discretion personnel matters require, with specific examples of people who grew, were promoted, or took on greater scope under your leadership
Demonstrated experience managing a distributed or fully remote engineering team across multiple time zones: building trust and cohesion without in-person contact, catching performance or morale problems early, and designing how the team communicates and decides rather than letting it happen by default
Experience managing engineers within a larger engineering organization, reporting to a senior manager and working alongside architecture, product, and systems engineering counterparts, with the judgment to know what you decide, what you escalate, and what you bring forward for alignment
Proven ability to sustain a culture of trust, accountability, and high standards, giving and receiving candid feedback without damaging relationships and holding a high bar with genuine care for the individual
Skill in facilitating and resolving high-stakes conversations and competing interests, with the written and verbal communication strength that leading a distributed team demands
Experience leading software teams delivering complex, mission-critical, or high-reliability systems
Experience partnering closely with product management or a product owner on capacity, staffing, and delivery risk
Professional software engineering background with enough depth to earn the credibility of senior engineers, take part in design discussions, evaluate technical trade-offs and risk, and recognize when technical debt or design decisions are hurting the team's throughput
Working fluency with modern software engineering practices (version control workflows, code review, test automation, CI/CD) and with agile, iterative delivery, including the judgment to adapt process to context rather than apply it ceremonially
Familiarity with distributed systems concepts, secure development practices, and quality attributes such as reliability, performance, maintainability, and operability

Nice To Haves

Familiarity with the defense/DoD program environment, including working with government customers, program management, and compliance obligations such as FAR, DISA STIGs, and NIST SP 800-171
Hands-on background with the Java platform, including Java and JVM languages such as Kotlin or Scala
Experience leading teams through significant modernization or refactoring efforts
Formal training, coaching credentials, or continued study in leadership and management
Active contributions to the engineering leadership community through mentoring, writing, or speaking

Responsibilities

Hold consistent, substantive one-on-ones, build a development plan with each engineer, and create the assignments and opportunities that move them toward it
Give direct, timely, specific feedback in a way that makes clear you are invested in the person receiving it, and ask for the same about your own leadership
Own performance management for your reports: goal setting, reviews, compensation input, recognition, honest intervention when performance falls short, and advocacy in promotion calibration
Coach rather than rescue. Resist the pull to solve problems that would teach someone more if you left them to it
Develop and sponsor the team's future leads and senior technical contributors
Build the trust and psychological safety that let engineers admit mistakes, ask for help, disagree openly, and treat setbacks as information rather than blame, none of which happens on a remote team without deliberate effort
Connect the team's day-to-day work to the mission it serves, so every engineer understands why their work matters to the warfighter and to the program
Encourage disagreement about ideas and drive it to real commitment instead of false consensus, running decisions so the best thinking on the team surfaces
Watch how work is distributed so the team's pace stays sustainable, and notice when someone is isolated, disengaged, or struggling
Build an inclusive team by setting norms that work across time zones and working styles: protected overlap hours, written updates that don't require everyone online at once, fair meeting times, and decisions recorded where people can find them later
Own the team's ability to execute against the priorities and sprint plan it is given: staffing, skill coverage, workflow, and the engineering practices that keep delivery predictable, including code review, test automation, CI/CD, definition of done, and release readiness
Give product management and the product owner a clear read on the team's capacity and staffing risk, and take part in sprint planning and the team's other ceremonies, coaching the team to own its commitments
Relay what the team is seeing about technical debt and modernization needs to product management, the architects, and program leadership
Remove impediments, dependencies, and organizational friction on the team's behalf, and surface schedule, staffing, and technical risks early with options attached
Take part in incident reviews and post-mortems, keeping the analysis blameless, and hold the team to its program obligations for security, compliance, and documentation
Communicate candidly in both directions: leadership's intent and context to the team, and an accurate, well-organized picture of the team's work, concerns, and needs to your manager
Contribute the team's perspective alongside your manager, the architects, product management, and systems engineering, and build strong working relationships with program management, quality, security, and government stakeholders
Navigate high-stakes, emotionally charged, or contentious conversations, whether with individuals, across teams, or with customers, and resolve interpersonal and cross-team conflict early and directly
Run effective meetings and write clearly, explaining technical concepts in terms non-technical audiences can follow and defaulting to writing over meeting when that serves a distributed team better
Partner with your manager on hiring for the team: interviewing, evaluating candidates, and keeping strong ones engaged, taking on more of it over time
Contribute to the team's interview process and hiring bar, weighing how a candidate works with others alongside their technical ability
Lead onboarding so new engineers reach real contribution quickly and feel part of the team, and advise on team composition, skill gaps, and structure as the program's needs change