Engineering Manager

About aterlo

• At Aterlo, our founders lead product and architecture.
• what we’re building, why, and the technical vision.
• As Engineering Manager, you build the capability to deliver it: the right people, practices, and processes to ship reliably as we grow.

Responsibilities

• You’ll coach and develop engineers, set clear expectations, build trust and accountability, and clear the obstacles that slow the team down.
• You’ll improve quality through practical changes to testing, deployment, code review, and knowledge sharing.
• You’ll stay hands-on technically, bring sound judgment to delivery estimates, and add just enough structure to keep the team fast as it scales.
• You coach the team on how to be better, have more impact and help them reach their career goals.
• You handle the difficult conversations.
• If someone isn't performing, you identify it early and either coach them up or manage them out before it hurts the culture.
• You ensure new hires are "Missionaries" (passionate about the goal) and have a structured onboarding plan so they don't flounder.
• Consistently deliver a product that maximizes customer value, product quality, security, and reliability, including building and maintaining highly-observable systems with excellent metrics and actionable alerts.
• You ensure the teams run standups, retrospectives, and planning sessions as appropriate.
• You ensure these aren't just empty rituals but actually unblock work.
• You ensure the team has the tools to operate successfully and within that manage the tool budget.
• You protect the team from founder optimism.
• You aggressively remove obstacles whether it’s access to tools, missing designs, or waiting on approval.
• Quality & Technical Health QA & CI/CD Standards: You implement the testing protocols and deployment pipelines that prevent "it works on my machine" issues.
• Ensure that the codebase has high code quality standards appropriate for each area.
• You structure the rotation so that no single engineer (and not the founders) is burned out by 3 AM alerts.
• You ensure that knowledge is codified and prioritize knowledge transfer from founders and other single points of failure.
• You measure and advocate for paying down technical debt in service of execution speed and quality.
• You take responsibility for the allocation and effectiveness of the “20% time”.

Requirements

• You create an environment where engineers feel safe to admit mistakes, speak up when things aren’t clear or push back on unrealistic deadlines.
• Ensuring engineers have clarity on what they're building and why (even when that clarity comes from translating founder context, not formal specs or discovery) Hiring & Onboarding: You manage the pipeline.
• Provide input towards technical direction and architecture decisions Skills/Qualifications 2 - 4 years of experience managing software development teams Previous hands-on software development experience Experience with SDLC methodologies for SaaS applications designing and building software products at scale A commitment to nurturing a team and growing individuals Strong leadership, consultation communication, and conflict management skills to build consensus with project leaders and stakeholders.
• Entrepreneurial spirit, priding yourself on getting valuable things done with a high level of quality Strategic planning and decision analysis capabilities, emphasizing quantitative or data-driven approaches.
• Proven ability to coordinate projects in an agile environment, aligning people, priorities, and dependencies to support successful delivery.
• Sound judgment in selecting tools and KPIs to measure engineering delivery, software quality, and team effectiveness.

Preferred

• Points Experience with networking and Internet Service Providers Experience with network or service monitoring products Experience operating production services The anticipated salary range for this role is $150,000–$180,000.

Pay

The final compensation offer will be determined based on the candidate's experience, skills, qualifications, and fit for the role, and may fall anywhere within the posted range.

Reality Checks

When founders ask for a feature in 2 days that takes 2 weeks, you are the one who communicates the realistic timeline based on data, not emotion.