Manager, Engineering - Tooling

We know experience is built in a number of ways. Even if your background doesn't match the exact requirements, we encourage you to apply and share any relevant skills in a cover letter. Sprout welcomes all candidates to apply, including those who identify as BIPOC, women and underrepresented genders in tech, LGBTQIA+, parents, veterans, persons with disabilities and people of all faiths.

Description

Sprout Social is looking for an Engineering Manager to lead our Tooling team.

Why join Sprout's Engineering team?

At Sprout, we believe great engineering organizations are built on exceptional developer experience. Our Tooling team creates the platforms, automation, and workflows that enable hundreds of engineers to build, test, deploy, and operate software safely and efficiently.

As the Engineering Manager for Tooling, you'll lead a team responsible for improving developer productivity across the company. From modern Continuous Delivery and CI/CD platforms to AI-powered developer workflows, engineering observability, release automation, and internal developer tooling, your team's work directly impacts every engineer at Sprout.

Work closely with Product Engineering teams to understand pain points and prioritize improvements that meaningfully increase developer velocity.

You'll partner closely with engineering leaders across Infrastructure and Product Engineering to reduce friction, improve reliability, and enable teams to ship software faster with confidence.

What you'll do

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of SRE's focused on Developer Experience and Engineering Productivity.
• Partner with Engineering leadership to define the long-term vision for developer tooling across Sprout.
• Drive the evolution of our Continuous Delivery platform, deployment automation, and release workflows.
• Lead modernization efforts across our CI/CD ecosystem.
• Partner with Infrastructure and Security teams to build secure-by-default engineering workflows.
• Guide technical direction for internal platforms supporting software development, deployment, monitoring, and operational excellence.
• Foster engineering best practices around automation, reliability, testing, and operational maturity.
• Help teams improve software delivery performance using DORA metrics and engineering health indicators.
• Enable adoption of AI-assisted engineering workflows and autonomous development tooling.
• Work closely with Product Engineering teams to understand pain points and prioritize improvements that meaningfully increase developer velocity.
• Support strategic infrastructure initiatives including deployment platforms, release management, engineering observability, source control automation, and internal developer portals.
• Build an inclusive, collaborative engineering culture focused on continuous improvement.

Areas owned by the Tooling team

Examples of platforms and technologies owned or supported include:

• Continuous Delivery platform
• GitHub Actions
• Jenkins modernization
• Deployment automation
• Build and release pipelines
• Internal developer tooling
• Engineering AI platforms and autonomous agents
• Datadog developer integrations
• PagerDuty engineering integrations
• Package management and artifact repositories
• Source control automation
• Engineering productivity metrics
• Observability

What you'll bring

We're looking for a collaborative engineering leader who enjoys solving large scale engineering productivity challenges.

Minimum qualifications

• 3-5+ years managing software engineering teams
• 7+ years building and operating production software systems
• Experience leading cross-functional technical initiatives across multiple engineering organizations
• Experience designing and operating CI/CD systems and modern software delivery pipelines
• Experience with cloud-native platforms such as Kubernetes and AWS
• Experience improving engineering productivity through automation

Preferred qualifications

• Experience with GitHub Actions or similar CI/CD platforms
• Experience leading Developer Experience or Platform Engineering teams
• Experience with deployment orchestration and release automation
• Experience with Infrastructure-as-Code and platform automation
• Experience implementing software delivery metrics such as DORA
• Experience evaluating or implementing AI assisted software development workflows
• Experience with observability platforms such as Datadog, Sentry, Grafana, or OpenTelemetry
• Experience supporting internal engineering platforms used across large engineering organizations

How you'll grow

Within 1 month

• Complete Sprout's onboarding program.
• Meet your team, stakeholders, and partner engineering organizations.
• Learn our software delivery lifecycle, deployment platforms, and developer workflows.
• Build relationships with Product Engineering, Infrastructure, Security, and Engineering Leadership.
• Understand current priorities around Continuous Delivery, CI CD modernization, and developer productivity.

Within 3 months

• Begin leading quarterly planning with your team.
• Develop a roadmap for engineering productivity improvements.
• Understand key developer pain points and identify opportunities to reduce friction.
• Partner with Engineering leaders to prioritize platform investments.
• Contribute to technical planning and architecture discussions for internal developer platforms.
• Help drive adoption of engineering best practices across multiple product teams.

Within 6 months

• Successfully deliver several meaningful improvements to developer experience and software delivery.
• Coach engineers through career development, performance feedback, and technical growth.
• Drive measurable improvements in deployment speed, reliability, and engineering efficiency.
• Lead cross functional initiatives spanning Infrastructure and Product Engineering.
• Establish clear operational metrics for Tooling platform health and adoption.
• Help teams safely adopt new deployment capabilities and engineering workflows.

Within 12 months

• Establish the Tooling team as a trusted engineering platform organization.
• Deliver measurable improvements in developer productivity and software delivery performance.
• Build and execute a multi-quarter roadmap aligned with Engineering strategy.
• Partner with senior engineering leadership on long-term platform investments.
• Develop future technical leaders within the team.
• Champion continuous improvement across engineering through automation, standardization, and developer focused platform investments.
• Help shape the future of AI-enabled software development at Sprout.

Success in this role

Success is not measured by the number of features shipped by your own team. It is measured by the productivity, reliability, and satisfaction of every engineering team that relies on the platforms you build.

You'll know you're succeeding when:

• Engineering teams deploy more frequently and with greater confidence.
• Developer friction decreases through automation and self-service platforms.
• Software delivery metrics improve across the organization.
• Developers adopt your platforms because they are intuitive and valuable.
• The Tooling team becomes a trusted strategic partner for engineering leaders.
• Engineers spend more time building customer value and less time managing infrastructure, tooling, and deployment complexity.

Our Benefits Program

We're proud to regularly be recognized for our team, product, and culture. We invest in our team with a comprehensive, competitive benefits program:

• Comprehensive Health & Wellness: Premium BCBSIL medical, dental (high/low plans), and vision (Eyemed) insurance for you and your eligible dependents.
• Premium Mental Health Support: Full, free access to Modern Health for you and your dependents, including coaching, therapy sessions, and digital wellness resources.
• Retirement Savings: 401(k) plan with a 50% company match on your first 6% of contributions (a 3% total match).
• Financial Security: 100% employer-paid Life and Disability insurance for your peace of mind.
• Flexible Paid Time Off: A flexible PTO policy, supplemented with additional company-wide Rest & Recharge days throughout the year.
• Paid Parental Leave: Up to 16 weeks of paid leave for new parents to support you in expanding your family.
• Annual Lifestyle Stipend: A $1,000 USD annual Lifestyle Spending Account to spend on your physical, mental, and financial well-being.
• Work From Home Support: A one-time $550 USD stipend to set up your home office, plus a monthly $50 USD stipend for internet.
• Giving Back: 16 hours of paid volunteer time annually, plus a $100 annual match for your charitable donations.
• Additional Financial Perks: Access to pre-tax commuter benefits, subsidized child/eldercare (Care.com), discounted pet insurance (Figo), and no-cost personalized financial wellness support through Your Money Line.
• This list is for informational purposes only. Benefit offerings are discretionary and subject to change and do not constitute a contract or guarantee of benefits.

Whenever possible, Sprout wants to provide our team with the flexibility to work in the location that makes the most sense for them. Sprout maintains a remote workforce in many places in the United States. However, we are not set up in all states, so please look at the drop-down box in our application to see whether your state is listed. Few roles require an office setting. If your position requires a physical presence in a Sprout office, it will be evident in the job listing and your offer letter.

Our salary ranges reflect the expected earning potential for this role. Individual pay is based on geographic zone, relevant experience, and skills.

Our current hiring range for this role: $186,800 - $233,500 annually. Offers are made within this range, with opportunities to grow within the broader band based on performance and impact.

We share both our current hiring range and our broader geographic salary bands to provide transparency into our compensation philosophy. This ensures you understand not only your starting potential but also the long-term growth potential available as you progress in your role.

We have two geographic pay zones in the United States:

Zone 1 (New York, California, Washington): $205,500 - $308,300

Zone 2 (All other US states): $186,800 - $280,200

These ranges were determined by a market-based compensation approach; we used data from trusted third-party compensation sources to set equitable, consistent, and competitive ranges. We also evaluate compensation bi-annually, identify any changes in the market and make adjustments to our ranges and existing employee compensation as needed.

Sprout Social is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We do not discriminate based on identity- race, color, religion, national origin or ancestry, sex (including sexual identity), age, physical or mental disability, pregnancy, veteran or military status, unfavorable discharge from military service, genetic information, sexual orientation, marital status, order of protection status, citizenship status, arrest record or expunged or sealed convictions, or any other legally recognized protected basis under federal, state, or local law. Because Sprout Social is a federal contractor, we affirmatively recruit individuals with a disability and protected veterans. Learn more about our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion in our latest DEI Report.

If you require a reasonable accommodation for any part of the interview process or to submit your application, please email us at accommodations@sproutsocial.com. Include the nature of your request and your preferred contact information. We'll do everything we can to support your success during our recruitment process while upholding your privacy. Please note that only inquiries regarding accommodations will receive a response from this email address; other inquiries will not be addressed (e.g., you send your resume but are not requesting an accommodation).

For more information about our commitment to equal employment opportunity, please click here (1) Equal Opportunity Employment Poster and (2) Sprout Social's Affirmative Action Statement.

Additionally, Sprout Social participates in the E-Verify program in certain locations, as required by law.

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Sprout Social Inc. and its subsidiaries process personal data submitted through your application to assess your qualifications for employment and to inform our hiring decision and, where applicable, for required governmental reporting. For more information, please review Sprout's Global Applicant Privacy Notice.

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