THE ROLEWe've grown past 20 engineers, all reporting directly to our CTO - and we're still scaling. As our first Engineering Manager, you'll take direct ownership of a team of engineers and, alongside the CTO, define what engineering leadership looks like at Confido: how we grow careers, how we hire, and how we stay fast as the team doubles.
This is a player-coach role on a team that has never had a management layer. Our engineers are strong, opinionated, and allergic to process for its own sake - you'll earn their trust through technical credibility and by making their work visibly better, not through org charts. If you've walked into a flat, founder-led team before and built management that engineers actually wanted, this will feel familiar.
Location: New York, NY (Relocation supported)
YOU MAY BE WORKING ON- Directly managing a team of 6-10 engineers - 1:1s, coaching, career growth, and performance
- Owning delivery for your team's roadmap: planning, prioritization, and unblocking without adding heavyweight process
- Partnering with the CTO on org design, career ladders, and management practices as we scale from 20 to 50+ engineers
- Staying close to the code - joining architecture and design reviews across our Rails, TypeScript/React, and Python systems
- Building and running hiring loops that raise the bar, and closing great engineers in a competitive market
- Identifying and growing future leads and managers from within the team
EXAMPLE PROBLEMS- Introducing structure to a team of 20+ engineers who have only ever reported to the CTO - without slowing them down
- Designing a career ladder that senior ICs respect and that doesn't push everyone toward management
- Keeping delivery predictable while the team, the product surface area, and the customer base all double
- Turning skeptics into advocates: proving that good management is a force multiplier, not overhead
WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FORRequired
- 3+ years managing software engineers directly, on top of 5+ years as a hands-on engineer
- You've scaled through hyper-growth at an early-stage startup - joining around Series A/B and riding it through Series C/D or beyond - and you know what breaks at each stage
- Enough technical depth to go deep in design reviews and hold your own with strong senior engineers (you don't need to ship production code daily)
- A track record of managing skeptics - you win people over through competence and outcomes, not title
- Bias toward lightweight process: you add structure only where it demonstrably helps, and you kill it when it doesn't
Nice to Have
- You've been a team's first manager, or introduced management to a previously flat org
- Experience as a founder, founding engineer, or early employee (first ~15)
- You've grown ICs into managers and built a leadership bench
- Familiarity with Ruby on Rails, TypeScript/React, or Python/ML systems
- Experience in B2B SaaS, fintech, or data-heavy products
Perks + Benefits- Equity - own a meaningful piece of the company you're helping build
- Fully paid health coverage through Aetna - we cover 100% of employee premiums
- Top-tier dental and vision coverage through Guardian
- Carrot Fertility Pro - comprehensive fertility and family-forming support
- 12 weeks of paid parental leave
- Unlimited PTO - plus regular 4-day holiday weekends we actually take
- 401(k) through Vestwell
- Paid relocation support - we'll help you make the move to NYC
- Fully equipped workspace from day one - laptop, monitor, keyboard, and a $200 stipend to personalize your setup
- Team perks - catered Friday lunches, team dinners, and unlimited coffee + snacks featuring products from the brands we work with
