Senior Engineering Manager, Non-Linear Productivity

Responsibilities

We are representing a confidential DevSecOps client seeking a Senior Engineering Manager to lead a newly-formed productivity engineering squad. This is a 0-to-1 team-building mandate focused on identifying and eliminating high-leverage friction points in the software development lifecycle.

You will personally recruit and lead a hand-picked team of four exceptional engineers to diagnose root causes of developer productivity loss and implement shift-left solutions measured by system-level metrics including merge request velocity, pipeline success rate, and pipeline latency.

Vision & Strategy

• Define the operating model for this productivity pilot, including how friction is diagnosed, prioritized, and resolved against three core system metrics
• Identify step-change productivity opportunities across the SDLC—flaky tests, review latency, pipeline reliability, tooling gaps, and context loss for both human and AI-assisted workflows
• Translate a broad mandate into concrete, time-boxed roadmaps with milestones for a 3-month pilot window

Team Building & Leadership

• Personally source, evaluate, and select 4 exceptional engineers for the pilot squad, owning the hiring bar directly
• Negotiate allocation models with current engineering managers to balance team commitments against pilot needs
• Establish technical direction and working norms for a fast-moving, autonomous team
• Mentor engineers in root-cause diagnosis and shift-left thinking to raise the bar for rigor

Technical Exploration & Experimentation

• Lead hands-on investigation to instrument and baseline key productivity metrics across the organization
• Diagnose high-leverage friction points and validate hypotheses with data before committing resources
• Design and implement compounding fixes including shift-left quality changes, tooling investment, and better interfaces for humans and agents
• Stay hands-on to review architecture, debug pipeline internals, and unblock the team on complex technical problems

Internal Adoption & Impact

• Own high-impact friction areas from diagnosis through fix to measurable metric movement
• Work directly with affected engineering teams to ensure fixes are adopted and sustained
• Track and report metric movement honestly, including when experiments don't deliver expected results
• Capture reusable patterns and playbooks for organization-wide adoption

Operations & Enablement

• Establish reporting cadence focused on metric movement rather than activity metrics
• Ensure pilot fixes degrade gracefully without introducing reliability risk to CI/CD systems
• Build the business case for transitioning from pilot to permanent function based on measurable results

What We're Looking For

Required Qualifications

• Track record leading small, high-autonomy engineering teams in developer productivity, CI/CD, platform, or infrastructure reliability
• Proven experience measured on system-level outcomes rather than feature delivery metrics
• Deep expertise with CI/CD and build systems—you understand pipeline failure modes, performance bottlenecks, and what actually moves success-rate and latency metrics
• Demonstrated root-cause problem-solving instinct and commitment to talent quality over headcount
• Comfort operating under metrics-driven accountability, including publicly baselining numbers and reporting progress honestly
• Strong executive-level communication skills for direct visibility to engineering leadership

Preferred Experience

• Experience with AI-assisted development workflows and understanding of human/agent friction points
• Prior experience running time-boxed pilots or 0-to-1 initiatives with explicit success criteria
• Deep familiarity with large-scale build/test systems and CI/CD internals

How We Work With You

Candidates apply directly through Get A Job.ai. Our talent team will conduct an initial screening to assess your background and fit for this role. If we move forward, we will submit your profile to our client for consideration. We ask that you do not contact the client organization directly during the recruitment process—all communication will be coordinated through our team to ensure a smooth and professional experience.

Pay

This is a remote, full-time position. The role reports to a VP-level engineering leader.

Note: Pay information was not provided in the source material. Please inquire with our recruiting team for compensation details specific to your location and experience level.

Equal Employment Opportunity: Get A Job.ai is committed to creating an inclusive recruiting process. We welcome candidates from all backgrounds and encourage applications from individuals who may not meet every qualification but are excited about the role.