Software Engineering Manager

Engineering Manager

We are a company that builds and supports 25+ internal and client-facing applications tailored to payroll for staffing industry. We are seeking an experienced Engineering Manager to lead our software development team through a period of significant growth and modernization.

This is a hands-on leadership role responsible for shaping team structure, improving delivery quality, and advancing SDLC maturity. You will work closely with Product and IT leadership to drive faster, more reliable software releases. While the team brings deep institutional knowledge and strong business expertise, they need a leader who can introduce modern engineering practices, expand team capacity, and shift focus from reactive support to planned, strategic development.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and develop a team of 5–10 engineers across.NET, SQL Server, Angular, and API development
• Own the end-to-end engineering delivery process, including sprint planning, release quality, incident management, and retrospectives
• Design and build a scalable team structure, incorporating QA, DevOps, and security capabilities
• Establish accountability for system reliability, delivery performance, and modernization initiatives
• Reduce reactive workload (currently ~80% support/bug fixes) by improving test coverage, CI/CD pipelines, and production observability
• Partner with Product to balance new platform development (Essentials suite) with legacy system maintenance
• Implement best practices in code reviews, automated testing, and deployment processes
• Mitigate key-person dependencies through documentation, knowledge sharing, and cross-training
• Collaborate with IT on infrastructure improvements, environment stability, and Azure migration strategy
• Work closely with DevOps to strengthen CI/CD, deployment automation, and system reliability

Qualifications

• 5+ years of software engineering experience, with 2+ years in a leadership or management role
• Strong hands-on experience with.NET/C# and SQL Server
• Proven success modernizing SDLC processes, particularly transitioning from manual to automated delivery
• Experience hiring, mentoring, and scaling engineering teams
• Ability to operate effectively within legacy systems while driving modernization efforts
• Strong communication skills with the ability to bridge engineering, product, operations, and executive teams
• Preferred: Experience with CI/CD tools (Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions), Angular, or payroll/financial systems

Why Join Us

• Opportunity to shape engineering culture and practices in a complex, real-world domain
• Stable, profitable organization with deep institutional knowledge
• Direct impact on platform strategy, architecture, hiring, and tooling decisions
• Collaborative environment with strong product leadership support

Success Metrics (First 6–12 Months)

• Reduce reactive support work from ~80% to under 40% of team capacity
• Establish CI/CD pipelines across core applications
• Standardize code review and testing practices
• Decrease reliance on key individuals for critical systems
• Achieve a predictable release cadence with improved quality
• Align engineering roadmap closely with product priorities

First 90 Days

• Evaluate existing systems, team structure, and delivery workflows
• Identify primary drivers of reactive work and production instability
• Establish baseline metrics (deployment frequency, lead time, defect rates)
• Introduce improvements to sprint planning, code review, and release processes
• Define hiring roadmap and address capability gaps across engineering, QA, and DevOps