- handbook
- Company
- Company
- Board & Investors
- Communications
- Decision making and project management
- Guides
- KPIs and OKRs
- principles
- Remote Work
- Security
- Asset Management Policy
- Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery Policy
- Information Security Roles and Responsibilities
- Operations Security Policy
- Risk Management Policy
- Third-Party Risk Management Policy
- Human Resources Security Policy
- Incident Response Plan
- Cryptography Policy
- Secure Development Policy
- Access Control Policy
- Information Security Policy and Acceptable Use Policy
- Data Management Policy
- Hardware Security Policy
- strategy
- values
- Operations
- Product
- Blueprints
- Feedback
- Glossary
- Market Segments
- Metrics
- Node-RED Dashboard
- Personas
- Pricing Principles
- Principles
- Product Growth
- Strategy
- Versioning
- Engineering & Design Practices
- Design
- Engineering
- Contributing
- Front End
- Packaging Guidelines
- Platform Ops
- Incident Response
- Observability
- FlowFuse Dedicated
- Staging Environment
- Production Environment
- Deployment
- Update Stacks on Production
- Project Management
- Releases
- Security Policy
- Support
- tools
- Website A/B Testing
- Internal Operations
- People Ops
- Coaching Plans
- Code of Conduct
- Compensation
- Expenses
- Hiring
- Holiday & Leave
- Job Descriptions
- CEO
- CTO
- Account Executive
- Product Marketer
- Chief of Staff
- Developer Relations Advocate
- Dashboard Engineer
- VP, Sales
- Product Manager
- Engineering Manager
- Solutions Engineer
- PeopleOps Policies
- Performance review
- Summit
- Marketing department
- Marketing
- blog
- Brand Voice
- Community
- Company Messaging
- Customer Stories
- Events
- FlowFuse for Education
- How we work
- Lead Activation
- Lead Generation
- Marketing - Website
- Marketing Programs
- Social Media
- Video
- Webinars
- Sales department
- Sales
Engineering Manager
Job Description
At FlowFuse, an Engineering Manager leads and grows our team of engineers. You'll need a strong technical background to effectively guide the team and make informed decisions, but your primary focus will be on leadership, coaching, and scaling the team to drive higher performance and faster innovation.
We believe in running our engineering team like a sports team. You'll be responsible for fostering a culture of high performance, continuous improvement, and a relentless drive to win.
As an Engineering Manager, you'll be shaping our engineering culture and driving the execution of our product roadmap. You will:
- Coach and Develop Your Team: You'll be responsible for the growth and development of your engineers. This includes conducting regular one-on-ones, providing constructive feedback, identifying areas for improvement, managing performance, and creating opportunities for career advancement. You'll know your team's strengths and weaknesses and how to best utilize their talents.
- Drive Performance and Velocity: You’ll do whatever is in your power to increase team performance and velocity. You'll establish clear goals and metrics, track progress, and implement strategies to help the team move faster and more efficiently without sacrificing quality. You will analyze the team's current performance, identify bottlenecks, and implement solutions to optimize our development processes.
- Build a Winning Culture: You will cultivate a high-performance, results-oriented environment. This means fostering a sense of ownership, accountability, and a shared commitment to our goals.
- Strategize and Execute: You'll work closely with other stakeholders to translate business objectives into a clear technical roadmap. You will be responsible for the successful and timely delivery of user-valuable software.
- Provide Technical Leadership: Your engineering background enables you to guide technical decisions, conduct code reviews, and mentor the team effectively. While writing code isn't your primary responsibility, your hands-on experience allows you to understand the technical challenges your team faces and make informed architectural decisions.
Skills
To be successful in this role, you'll need a blend of technical prowess and leadership skills. You should bring to the table:
- Solid Engineering Background: You've walked the walk and have hands-on experience building software. Your background in software development gives you credibility with the team and enables you to make informed technical decisions. Familiarity with our tech stack (Node.js, Node-RED, Vue.js, DevOps tooling) is valuable but not essential—what matters most is that you've been in the trenches and understand what engineers face daily.
- A Growth-Oriented Leader: You have startup experience, and a track record of building and scaling high-performing engineering teams.
- A Performance-Driven Mindset: You are data-driven and have experience implementing and tracking metrics to improve team performance. You're constantly looking for ways to optimize processes and increase efficiency.
- An Excellent Communicator: You can clearly articulate technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences. You are a great listener and can build strong relationships with your team and other stakeholders.
- A "Sports Team" Captain: You understand the dynamics of a high-performing team. You know how to foster collaboration, healthy competition, and a shared will to win. You lead by example and inspire your team to perform at their best.
90-Day Plan
- Week 1-4: Immerse & Understand
- Familiarize yourself with FlowFuse's product vision, engineering strategy, and current roadmap.
- Conduct initial one-on-ones with all direct reports, setting up regular cadences for feedback and development. Get to know your team, understand their strengths, career aspirations, and current projects.
- Review existing engineering processes, tools, and codebase to identify initial areas of opportunity.
- Meet with key stakeholders across product, sales, and leadership to understand their expectations and challenges related to engineering.
- Week 5-8: Assess and Plan
- Begin to analyze team performance metrics and identify potential bottlenecks or areas for improvement in velocity and quality. Set goals for expected improvements.
- Collaborate with product and other engineering leads to refine the immediate technical roadmap and priorities.
- Participate in code reviews and observe the developer workflow to understand the team's technical processes and challenges.
- Implement initial process improvements to increase team efficiency and output.
- Begin to define and track key performance indicators (KPIs) for your team, regularly reviewing progress.
- Week 9-13: Execute and Optimize
- Lead the planning and execution of a significant feature or project, demonstrating effective project management and technical leadership.
- Identify and start addressing any performance management or development needs within the team, creating individual growth plans.
- Develop plan to drive 20% throughput improvement in engineering org, leveraging AI and other tools to get there in the next 90 days.
Hiring Plan
- Initial Screening: Review resumes and cover letters to assess candidate qualifications and experience.
- First Interview (Technical Background & Leadership): Conduct a video interview to assess technical background, understanding of software development practices, and leadership/management experience. Past hands-on engineering experience is essential for credibility and decision-making.
- Second Interview (Team Leadership & Culture Fit): In-depth interview with the CEO and other relevant team leads to discuss leadership philosophy, experience scaling teams, and alignment with FlowFuse's "sports team" culture.
- Leadership Assessment / Case Study: Candidates will be presented with a real-world scenario or problem relevant to FlowFuse's engineering challenges (e.g., team scaling, performance optimization, technical decision-making) and asked to propose solutions.
- STAR Interview (Behavioral Alignment): A behavioral interview focusing on past experiences to understand how the candidate has handled challenges, collaborated, and driven performance.
- Offer: Extend an offer to the selected candidate.
First interview
Questions to consider:
- What is your experience with remote work and remote-first environments?
- Talk me through your EM experience.
- Tell me about a time you handled an underperforming engineer on your team.
- Why are you not an engineer but an EM?
- What's the best KPI for an EM?
- What's the best way to measure that an engineering team is delivering customer value?
- What metrics do you want to start monitoring in your first week?
Table of Contents
Page maintainer
CEO
Updated: 2 Oct, 2025