Engineering Manager - UK

Overview

We are seeking a passionate Engineering Manager to join our Europe engineering leadership to help cultivate an empowered, high-performing team culture where engineers own their projects end-to-end. This role focuses on developing individual and team performance rather than traditional sprint planning or product decision-making, fostering autonomy and innovation within the team.

Role Responsibilities

• Coach engineers to independently manage large, loosely defined projects and deliver results with minimal intervention.
• Support product and technical specification development through constructive feedback, influencing but not dictating decisions.
• Remain hands-on by actively contributing to code-related tasks such as debugging, small bug fixes, and improving developer experience.
• Lead smaller teams, ideally around six direct reports, allowing close observation, mentoring, and occasional coding involvement without being a bottleneck.

Culture and Leadership Philosophy

This role requires an optimistic outlook on engineering ownership, rejecting conventional process-heavy approaches in favor of simplifying bureaucratic overhead and encouraging innovation. Engineering leaders at this company value deep engagement with individual performance metrics, culture-building, and empowering engineers for autonomy and excellence.

Ideal Candidate Profile

• Enjoys balancing technical depth with management responsibilities, keeping coding skills current.
• Has a strong interest in people management—motivating teams, giving candid feedback, and designing systems that enable peak performance.
• Possesses excellent communication skills to effectively facilitate change and navigate diverse team perspectives.
• Deep understanding of identifying, recruiting, and growing exceptional engineering talent.
• Thrives in a high-trust, high-autonomy startup environment and embraces flexible role expectations.

What To Avoid

• Disinterest in coding or reluctance to maintain technical proficiency.
• Choosing management solely as a career growth path without passion for leadership.
• Preference for controlling product decisions over empowering teams to make them independently.
• Comfort with process-heavy environments and resistance to alternative team models emphasizing autonomy.

Engineering Culture

• Minimal process paired with maximum ownership by engineers, who own entire project cycles from specification through delivery.
• A culture of mutual kindness and humility fostering natural collaboration with deliberate communication.
• Prioritization of developer tooling and infrastructure investments to maximize leverage and deployment speed with minimal team size.

Additional Information

• Engineering team consists of 25+ skilled engineers in Europe, with plans for growth.
• Biannual in-person meetings occur alongside opportunities for regular regional team meetups with allocated budgets.
• Strong focus on work-life balance with standard working hours and emphasis on preserving focus time.