Engineering Manager

Shipd is our gamified data collection platform where contributors take on quests, bounties, and challenges that feel like the best developer and gamification experience. With rapidly scaling annualized run rate and a small 6-person engineering team, we’re now scaling fast. We need an Engineering Manager who can grow the org to 12–15 engineers, keep technical quality high, and stay hands-on while building the systems that will carry us to $70M+ ARR.

You’ll still code, design systems, and make technical tradeoffs while managing velocity in the engineering team. But you’ll also set the structure, processes, hiring bar, and culture for our next phase of growth.

What You’ll Do

• Scale the team: Hire 5+ engineers in the next few months, build interview processes, and create technical assessments.

• Map people to projects: Balance short-term delivery for 6-7 figure commercial contracts with long-term platform investments.

• Stay hands-on: Write code, review design docs, and make system-level architecture decisions.

• Lead technical direction: Balance “last mile” customer features with general platform improvements.

• Own engineering velocity: Build lightweight processes (sprints, demos, delivery tracking) that improve coordination without slowing us down.

• Ensure quality delivery: Oversee execution for customer contracts with tight SLAs; manage on-call, emergency fixes, and stability.

• Coordinate across teams: Align core product engineering with frontier data engineering pipelines.

You’ll Succeed Here If You Have

• Strong background as a senior engineer who moved into management.

• Hands-on experience with React, Next.js, TypeScript (our stack).

• Track record of building scalable systems for complex workflows, ideally in developer tooling or data platforms.

• Experience managing 7–20 person teams in high-growth startups.

• Comfort with customer-facing engineering and delivering under tight deadlines.

• Ability to implement right-sized process—structure without bureaucracy.

• Strong organizational thinking: mapping people to projects, setting technical standards, and balancing priorities.

Characteristics We’re Looking For

• Technically impressive—you earn respect from engineers by coding and system design.

• Execution-focused—care about velocity, stability, and delivery.

• Startup DNA—scrappy, resourceful, and thrives in ambiguity.

• Mission-driven to create the data engine for AI progress.

Nice to Have

• Experience scaling from 5 → 20+ engineers at a Series A/B startup.

• Familiarity with marketplaces, two-sided platforms, or developer communities.

• Background in frontier data, ML pipelines, or developer tooling.

Not a Fit If

• You’ve been a VP at a large company and are too far from code.

• You need heavy process, bureaucracy, or extensive planning cycles.

• You can’t code at a senior level or run technical interviews.

• You slow down decisions instead of enabling fast iteration.