POSITION SUMMARYThe Senior Manager, Software Engineering leads delivery and operational health across one or more product areas, ensuring engineering execution aligns to LifeStance's product and technology strategy. This leader takes end-to-end accountability for outcomes - planning, sequencing, and balancing delivery, quality, and operational stability across multiple squads.
This is a technically credible leadership role. The Senior Manager is expected to review architecture, challenge design decisions, and guide system design discussions across modern web and cloud-native systems. Success is measured by consistent delivery against commitments, healthy team execution, stable production services, and a measurable lift in engineering discipline and operational maturity.
COMPENSATION: $157,000 - $195,000/annually in addition to a competitive bonus plan
RESPONSIBILITIES- Lead execution and delivery for one or more product areas, ensuring commitments are met with high quality (30%)
- Plan and sequence work to execute established product and technology strategy within team scope (15%)
- Manage and develop engineers through coaching, feedback, and performance management (15%)
- Drive team-level and cross-team projects, including targeted process improvements (15%)
- Coordinate with vendors and partners to ensure effective integration and delivery (10%)
- Monitor operational health and execution risks, escalating issues as needed (10%)
- Partner with product counterparts to align priorities, scope, and delivery expectations (5%)
In this role you will:
- Translate strategic direction into actionable team initiatives, breaking down objectives into deliverable workstreams and ensuring teams understand both the what and the why
- Provide technical stewardship across the product area, reviewing architecture, challenging design decisions, and setting standards for code quality, scalability, observability, and operational resilience
- Set a high bar for engineering rigor and hold teams accountable with persistence, while fostering psychological safety and open communication
- Proactively surface risks, dependencies, and delivery gaps, escalating tradeoffs early when scope, timelines, or cross-team commitments are at stake
- Identify workflow inefficiencies and drive targeted process improvements to enhance predictability, quality, and team effectiveness
- Support legal and regulatory compliance by identifying risks during execution and ensuring teams follow established policies
REQUIREMENTS- Bachelor's degree typically required; additional highly related experience may be considered in lieu of the degree
- 7+ years of software engineering and delivery experience across multiple systems
- 2+ years of formal supervisory responsibility
- 5+ years of ownership across team delivery and execution
- Demonstrated success in technology-forward or digital-first companies strongly preferred
Required knowledge and skill sets:
- Technical depth and credibility across modern web and cloud-native systems including React/TypeScript frontends, Node.js services, event-driven and API/microservices architectures, and AWS, sufficient to review architecture, challenge design decisions, and identify performance, reliability, and scalability risks
- Multi-squad execution leadership including planning, sequencing, and balancing competing demands, coordinating cross-team dependencies, and driving predictable delivery without creating churn
- People leadership and talent development including managing senior engineers and emerging leaders, setting clear performance expectations, and developing high-agency, accountable teams
- Execution discipline and continuous improvement with a track record of raising engineering standards, delivery predictability, operational maturity, on-call effectiveness, and incident response rigor
- Strong stakeholder communication and influence across product, design, and business partners, with the ability to translate strategy into execution and execution realities back into clear, actionable tradeoffs
