Manager, Software Engineering

What You’ll Do

Own Delivery

• Co-own the kanban process with product management: maintain flow, manage WIP, prioritize ruthlessly, and hold the team to delivery commitments
• Translate business priorities into clear, sequenced work with defined outcomes and measurable success criteria
• Surface blockers and risks early and resolve them; stakeholders should always have an accurate picture of where things stand
• Apply the principle “fix the process, don’t automate the broken one”: engage deeply enough with the work to know when the solution is right, not just when it is done

Build & Develop the Team

• Recruit, hire, onboard, and develop a team of engineers, including both existing Vestmark engineers and new hires aligned with the AI-native profile we are building toward
• Manage performance actively: set clear expectations, provide direct feedback, recognize strong performance, and address underperformance without delay
• Integrate engineers from different starting points into a cohesive team with shared standards, mutual accountability, and consistently high output
• Invest in each person’s growth, with particular focus on building AI fluency across the team regardless of starting point
• Contribute to the growth and development of our core values: We Before Me, Positive Energy, Knowledge Explorer, and Own It

Drive AI-Native Practice

• Model AI-native development practices yourself: use AI tools actively in how you plan, communicate, analyze work, and operate as a manager
• Reinforce the team’s AI-native standards in every interaction: planning sessions, reviews, retrospectives, and day-to-day decision-making
• Partner with the Principal Engineer to ensure delivery practices support, rather than constrain, the team’s ability to build agentic and AI-driven solutions
• Stay current on AI tooling and agentic system capabilities; the expectation is that you adapt quickly to new tools and approaches as they emerge

Operate with Judgment & Adaptability

• Make decisions with the information available; waiting for certainty is not an option in an environment that moves at this pace
• Adapt quickly as priorities, tools, and circumstances change; bring the team with you without losing momentum
• Navigate ambiguity at the team level while maintaining clarity for the individuals on your team about what they are working on and why
• Build and maintain strong working relationships across engineering, product management, and operations to keep work flowing and dependencies resolved

What We’re Looking For

Leadership & People Management

• Demonstrated experience managing a software engineering team of meaningful size; you have hired, developed, and managed out, and you can speak to each with specificity
• Track record of building high-performing teams, including integrating engineers with different skill levels and backgrounds into a cohesive unit
• Direct, honest communicator: equally effective giving feedback to an individual engineer and presenting delivery status to senior leadership
• You treat performance management as a core competency: you set clear expectations, give direct feedback, and don't let underperformance linger

Delivery Ownership

• Proven ability to own end-to-end delivery across multiple concurrent workstreams with genuine accountability for outcomes
• Fluency with kanban-based delivery: WIP management, flow metrics, continuous prioritization, and outcome-based planning
• Ability to engage with business problems deeply enough to make good sequencing and trade-off decisions, not just manage tasks
• Bias for action: you make the call, communicate it clearly, and adjust if you are wrong

AI Fluency & Adaptability

• You use AI-assisted development tools and agentic systems regularly and with genuine depth: you have opinions about them, you are actively developing your practice, and you model that standard explicitly for the engineers on your team
• Demonstrated ability to adapt quickly to new tools, processes, and circumstances; your default response to change is to engage, not to resist
• Curiosity about where AI-native engineering is heading and how it will continue to change the work of building and leading software teams

Judgment & Communication

• High judgment in ambiguous situations: able to weigh competing priorities, make defensible calls, and take accountability for the outcome
• Ability to maintain clarity and focus for a team operating in a fast-moving, sometimes uncertain environment
• Strong written and verbal communication; the team and the organization should always know where things stand and why decisions were made

Product Mindset

• Track record of driving scope and priority decisions at the team level: connecting what the squad is building to measurable business outcomes and pushing back when the work doesn't align
• You engage with the business problem your team is solving, not just the delivery plan; you can distinguish between a well-scoped initiative and one that will move the wrong metric

What Will Help You Stand Out

• Experience leading a team through a meaningful shift in how they work: a new delivery model, a major change in tooling, or a significant restructuring of how engineering and product collaborated
• Hands-on experience with AI-native or agentic development environments, either as an engineer or as a manager of engineers doing that work
• Background in financial services technology or other highly regulated, operationally complex domains
• A track record of integrating tenured employees and new hires into a cohesive unit, particularly where cultural alignment and skill development were part of the challenge

Education & Experience

• B.S. in Computer Science or equivalent work experience
• 5+ years of software engineering experience; strong enough technical background to evaluate engineering trade-offs, read designs critically, and earn the respect of the Principal-level engineers on your team
• 3+ years of people management experience in a software engineering context, managing a team of at least 5 engineers with clear evidence of hiring, developing, and managing direct reports