Engineering Manager – EU

About This Opportunity

Our talent team is representing a confidential SaaS organization seeking an Engineering Manager to help build and lead their growing European engineering team. This is a unique opportunity to shape engineering culture at a company that rejects traditional process-heavy methodologies in favor of giving engineers genuine ownership and autonomy.

The organization believes in empowering software engineers to write product specs, make product decisions, and drive projects to completion without being boxed into narrow roles. Their engineering leaders focus on building teams, developing skills, and creating environments where talented engineers can do their best work—not running sprint planning or making all the technical decisions themselves.

This role is based in Europe and reports to the Director of Engineering, Europe. You'll work with a team of 25+ experienced engineers, maintaining approximately 6 direct reports to ensure you have time for observation, coaching, praise, and even coding.

Responsibilities

• Build and develop a high-performing engineering team in Europe, focusing on individual performance, process improvement, and culture
• Provide feedback on product and technical specifications to help engineers identify where to cut scope or improve quality, while coaching them to make final decisions themselves
• Grow engineers to take on large, loosely defined projects and deliver them with minimal intervention
• Stay technical by debugging customer issues, shipping small fixes, or improving developer experience while staying off the critical path
• Identify patterns across the team and build systems and automation that improve how the team operates
• Hold the team to high standards and provide direct feedback, even to top performers
• Facilitate change at both individual and organizational levels through empathetic communication
• Recruit exceptional engineers and develop team members into autonomous, ownership-driven contributors

What We're Looking For

Must-Have Skills and Experience:

• Strong technical background with the ability to hold in-depth conversations across infrastructure, backend, and frontend domains
• Genuine passion for management problems—driving people to be their best, giving difficult feedback, and building systems that enable excellence
• Track record of holding teams to high standards and providing detailed, constructive feedback
• Exceptional communication skills with the ability to navigate beliefs, opinions, and past experiences while facilitating change
• Deep understanding of what makes exceptional engineers successful and how to recruit and develop them
• Comfort working in high-trust, high-autonomy environments where leaders wear multiple hats
• Active interest in staying current with technology and coding regularly
• Conviction that engineering teams can operate differently from traditional models at scale

Technical Environment:

TypeScript (frontend and backend), Node.js, React, Apollo GraphQL, Postgres, Redis. Previous experience with this exact stack is not required, but technical fluency is essential.

This Role Is Not a Fit If:

• You don't enjoy coding or staying current with technology
• You became a manager simply because it was the only growth path available
• You prefer making all product decisions rather than empowering your team
• You believe large teams inevitably require traditional processes like sprint planning and detailed PM-written specifications
• You view staff/principal engineers primarily as project managers or architecture reviewers

How We Work With You

Get A Job.ai serves as your representative throughout this process. Here's how it works:

• Submit your application through the Get A Job.ai platform
• Our recruiting team conducts an initial screening conversation
• We prepare and submit qualified candidates directly to our client
• We coordinate all interview scheduling and provide preparation guidance
• Please do not contact the client directly—all communication flows through our team to ensure the best experience for everyone

The client's interview process includes six stages: an intro call, past experience deep dive, technical screen, coffee chat with senior leadership, and a team meeting round. We'll prepare you for each step and provide feedback throughout.

Pay

Compensation details will be discussed during the screening process and are competitive for the European market. The client also offers equity with a 10-year exercise window, unlimited PTO, generous equipment and education budgets, and other benefits.

Equal Opportunity

Get A Job.ai provides equal employment opportunities to all applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetics, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. We are committed to a diverse and inclusive recruitment process.