Staff Software Engineering Manager

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Staff Software Engineering Manager based in the United States.

This is a high-impact leadership opportunity for an experienced engineering professional who thrives at the intersection of technical depth and people management. In this role, you will lead a small but high-performing team of engineers while actively contributing to the design and development of scalable backend systems. You will play a central role in shaping architecture, engineering standards, and delivery practices while fostering a culture of ownership, quality, and continuous improvement. The position blends hands-on coding with strategic leadership, requiring a strong backend engineering foundation and a passion for building reliable, high-performance systems. You will also help drive the adoption of modern AI-assisted development workflows and evolve engineering practices toward a shift-left, developer-owned quality model. This role is ideal for a player-coach leader who enjoys mentoring engineers while remaining deeply engaged in technical execution.

• Lead, mentor, and develop a team of software engineers, including performance management, career development, coaching, and hiring efforts.
• Contribute directly to software development by designing and implementing scalable backend services, APIs, and systems powering web and mobile applications.
• Own system architecture and technical design decisions, ensuring high standards for scalability, reliability, and maintainability.
• Establish and uphold engineering best practices, including coding standards, testing strategies, and code quality expectations.
• Drive end-to-end delivery of engineering projects by planning, prioritizing, and coordinating work within an Agile/Scrum environment.
• Ensure high-quality outcomes by promoting strong automated testing practices, including unit, integration, and system-level validation.
• Partner with engineering leadership to evolve shift-left testing practices and embed quality earlier in the development lifecycle.
• Improve engineering productivity by evaluating, adopting, and optimizing modern development tools, including AI-assisted technologies.
• Champion AI-first development practices by coaching engineers on effective usage and integrating AI tools into daily workflows.
• Collaborate closely with product, UX, and engineering stakeholders to define requirements, shape solutions, and deliver business-aligned features.
• Work across engineering teams to align architectural decisions, share best practices, and improve overall system design and development processes.

Requirements

• 8+ years of professional software development experience building production-grade software systems.
• Proven experience operating at Senior or Staff Software Engineer level with ownership of architecture and technical design.
• Strong backend engineering expertise with Java, Spring / Spring Boot, and SQL.
• Experience designing and building scalable APIs, backend services, and distributed systems.
• Strong understanding of software architecture principles, design patterns, scalability, and system trade-offs.
• Demonstrated experience in people management, including mentoring, coaching, performance management, and team development.
• Strong coding skills with a focus on clean, maintainable code and robust automated test coverage.
• Experience implementing or evolving shift-left testing practices and developer-owned quality models.
• Proficiency with modern software engineering workflows including CI/CD, source control, and code review practices.
• Experience debugging, troubleshooting, and supporting production systems in complex environments.
• Hands-on experience using AI-assisted development tools and promoting their adoption within engineering teams.
• Strong ability to influence technical decisions and communicate effectively across engineering, product, and UX stakeholders.
• Experience participating in or leading technical hiring processes.
• Preferred experience with frontend technologies such as JavaScript, TypeScript, or React.
• Experience building or supporting high-scale consumer-facing applications is a plus.

Benefits

• Competitive base salary ranging from $190,000 to $225,000 with eligibility for a 10% performance bonus.
• Fully remote work across the continental United States with flexible working arrangements.
• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision insurance coverage for employees and eligible dependents.
• Health Savings Account (HSA) and Flexible Spending Account (FSA) options.
• Life insurance, short-term, and long-term disability coverage.
• 401(k) retirement plan with employer match.
• Up to 15 weeks of paid parental leave for eligible employees.
• Flexible work-life structure with core collaboration hours and manager-aligned scheduling flexibility.
• Performance-based bonuses and annual merit increase opportunities.
• Employee incentive programs and exclusive partner benefits.
• Strong culture of innovation, technical excellence, and continuous learning.