Engineering Manager - UK

Overview

At Ashby, we are seeking an Engineering Manager for our European team to foster a unique engineering culture where software engineers take full ownership of product specifications, decisions, and project completions without being bound by traditional processes. We aspire to empower engineers by minimizing bureaucratic hurdles and providing an environment that encourages innovation and autonomy.

Role and Responsibilities

In this leadership position, you will focus heavily on nurturing individual performance, cultivating team culture, and skill growth rather than directing sprint planning or product decisions. Responsibilities include:

• Developing engineers’ capabilities to independently execute large, loosely defined projects.
• Providing guidance and feedback on product and technical specifications to improve scope and quality without directly making final decisions.
• Maintaining strong technical involvement by debugging, releasing small fixes, and enhancing developer tools while not being a bottleneck.
• Leading initiatives such as improving data generation and simulation in demo accounts, benefiting multiple departments.

Desired Profile

The ideal candidate is passionate about both management and technology, actively involved in coding, and motivated by mentoring and complex problem-solving with long-term impact. Key attributes include:

• Enjoys deep technical discussions across diverse systems including infrastructure and frontend/backend.
• Motivated to develop people by providing constructive feedback and building efficient management systems.
• Holds high standards, capable of delivering detailed guidance to all team members.
• Excellent and empathetic communication skills to facilitate change and foster buy-in across varying perspectives.
• Insightful understanding of what makes exceptional engineers and how to recruit and develop them effectively.
• Prefers to empower teams in decision-making rather than controlling product direction.
• Thrives in a fast-paced startup environment with high trust, autonomy, and multiple leadership responsibilities.

Engineering Culture at Ashby

We follow a minimal process approach empowering engineers to own decisions usually reserved for product and design, encouraging ownership, innovation, and collaboration with very limited meetings to optimize focus time. Our team is diverse, humble, and committed to lifelong learning. Engineering leaders at Ashby invest significantly in tooling that accelerates development, with continuous integration and deployment multiple times daily.

Additional Information

This position supports a highly autonomous model emphasizing transparency, minimal process, and ownership at scale, striving to eliminate traditional management pitfalls. Managers typically oversee up to 6 direct reports, balancing hands-on coding with effective leadership. The role includes occasional in-person meetups and a supportive budget for regional team gatherings.