Software Engineering Manager

We’re hiring a Software Engineering Manager to join our team. Our Engineering Managers are Senior or Principal Software Engineers who are committed to supporting the professional growth of their team members, in addition to their hands-on-keyboard delivery responsibilities. Their workload is split 50/50 between people management and delivery time.

Engineers in this position will have strong technical and consulting skills and have demonstrated leadership ability with positive responses and feedback from their peers and team members. They may specialize in specific technical or consulting areas though not necessary.

As a manager, you care deeply about your direct reports. You are a great listener and can advocate for your team. You're able to balance client work with team leadership.

The Engineering Manager role is an "add-on" to our Senior or Principal Engineer roles. Before applying for this position, please read our Software Engineering Career Path for Senior Engineer and/or Principal Engineer to determine which role best suits your experience.

Read on to learn about us, what it’s like to work with us, what we’re looking for, and our hiring process.

Tandem is a technology and innovation studio that specializes in product definition, custom software, and software managed services. We create custom software that inspires people and drives business forward. As a talented group of thinkers and makers from many disciplines, we are brought together by a shared goal: bring talented designers and engineers together to solve meaningful business problems. We always focus first on people — our clients, their customers, and our team — by collaborating to solve meaningful business challenges. We enjoy designing and building ambitious digital products and tools.

As a consultancy, we have the opportunity to solve a lot of different problems. We work directly with our clients in small teams, building and providing guidance on products, and collaborating with designers. Our unique approach to consulting leads to a better developer experience and a higher quality of work life.

As engineers, we love well-tested, maintainable, and clean code! We are always encouraging each other to write better code through pair programming and code reviews. We’re generalists and strive to make sure that we’re choosing the best technology to solve our clients’ problems. Right now we’re loving Postgres, Rails, and React as our greenfield tech stack, but we occasionally have projects in the Python, Java, .NET, Node, iOS, or ReactNative ecosystems. Nothing is off-limits, so we never turn down the opportunity to learn a new technology! 

Our vision is to create a supportive, collaborative environment and empower people to deliver work they’re proud of. At Tandem, everyone teaches and everyone learns. Egos are low, and we're all genuinely interested in seeing everyone else succeed. 

We would love to hear from you if you

• Have successfully managed teams of developers as an engineering manager or as a team/project lead
• Have experience empowering and nurturing technical teams 
• Are excited to foster an inclusive and diverse team environment
• Are eager to work with folks of varied professional backgrounds and wide-ranging experiences
• Are confident in your ability to advise and consult client stakeholders
• Have experience working in an agile development process
• Love to learn and look at challenges as learning opportunities
• Value a breadth of knowledge and enjoy being a generalist developer
• Delight in problem solving and strive to make the best decisions for the problem and information at hand
• Align with our core values and genuinely want to do work that makes a positive impact
• Have an expert proficiency in multiple full stacks, including relational database, server-side framework, and client-side framework
• Have contributed to architecture decisions on multiple large-scale applications during your career
• Align with our core values and genuinely want to do work that makes a positive impact

Tandem engineering managers are expected to contribute substantively to their project codebase as a member of the delivery team, as either senior or principal engineers. Our career levels and responsibilities are cumulative. For a full list of responsibilities, please read our Software Engineering Career Path for Senior Engineer and/or Principal Engineer.

• Carry out the responsibilities of a Senior Engineer or Principal Engineer
• Manage the performance and growth of up to 6 software engineers of various skill levels 
• Establish high-quality relationships with your direct reports
• Mentor and coach your direct reports in both technical and professional/consulting skills
• Identify growth opportunities through the solicitation of feedback and / or direct observation for your direct reports
• Collaborate with your direct reports on developing goals aimed at any relevant growth areas
• Conduct twice-annual values-driven performance reviews for each direct report
• Perform salary adjustments and promotions for each direct report
• Initiate corrective action for your direct reports’ performance, if necessary
• Proactively sponsor your direct reports for opportunities outside their client project
• Advocate for your direct reports’ concerns and needs with Tandem’s leadership team
• Navigate difficult conversations with care and empathy
• Communicate thoughtfully and adapt to different communication styles
• Shepherd the engineering hiring process and own communication with candidates throughout the process
• Actively participate in weekly Tandem leadership meetings
• Define processes and set delivery standards for the organization
• Research, recommend, and implement practices and tools to support the business
• Assess company culture needs based on conversations with your direct reports and the rest of the company and make recommendations for any necessary changes
• Lead by example, modeling values-driven behavior and choices and coach all team members to do the same

• Serve as technical lead on projects 
• Communicate your opinions on technical matters and can explain the justifications, benefits, and considerations behind decisions
• Support other team members in languages and frameworks in which they may be less comfortable
• For full details, please read our  Software Engineering Career Path for Senior Engineer and/or Principal Engineer

• Successfully plan and deliver large, long-term projects and adeptly negotiates scope tradeoffs with clients
• Lead client calls, manages expectations, and have difficult conversations when necessary
• Mentor your teammates in an open, respectful, flexible, empathetic manner
• Handle uncertainty within project scope of work and team effectively and guides team members through that ambiguity
• For full details, please read our  Software Engineering Career Path for Senior Engineer and/or Principal Engineer

We care deeply about our team and strive to provide flexibility and benefits so each person can prioritize the things they care about. 

For example, our core working hours are from 10am-4pm in your local time zone. The goal of core hours is to ensure that we can pair and collaborate in a high-bandwidth way during the majority of our workday while allowing us the flexibility that real life requires. You may notice that 10am-4pm for five days doesn't add up to 40 hours - yet 40 is generally what we expect to do. How you organize your work time outside of core hours is at your discretion, whether this is early mornings, late evenings, or weekends (though weekend work is not recommended).

Our other benefits include

• Healthy work/life balance with no overtime requests
• Competitive annual salary ($7,000-$10,000 annual salary add-on to Principal Software Engineer or Senior Software Engineer salary)
• 100% employer paid medical, dental, and vision plans for employee, spouse, and family
• 100% employer paid life insurance policy
• 100% employer paid short-term and long-term disability insurance
• 3 weeks of paid time off to start, increasing by 1 week each year up to 5 weeks off
• 3 paid conference days each year
• Annual learning budget for conferences, courses, online training, books, etc.
• Eligibility to enroll in the Tandem retirement plan with 3% employer matching after 6 months of employment

For a full list of all benefits and employment policies, please check out our Company Handbook.

We use a 4 step process.

1. Application
2. Phone screen
3. Take home code challenge
4. Remote in-person interview

The first step in our process is to fill out our application form. You will be asked a few questions on that form. We value thoughtful responses and will disregard applications without them.

If we decide to move forward, we’ll follow up with you to schedule an initial phone screen with one of our engineers. Our phone screens are non-/low-technical. We won’t be grilling you on database design but are interested in learning about your career trajectory, professional experiences, and what interests you.

If that goes well, we’ll send you our take-home code challenge. We know that everyone has different responsibilities and priorities in life, and we want to give you the time you need to shine. You will have 10 days to complete your challenge and submit it. 

Once submitted, we’ll do an internal code review to determine if we’d like to do an in-person interview. If we choose not to move forward, we’re happy to schedule a call for feedback.

Finally, the last step in our process is a remote in-person interview. You’ll have the chance to meet with many of our team members, extend your code challenge, pair with us on real clients and problems that we’re solving that day, and participate in a consulting challenge.

• We've embraced salary band transparency and ensure our accountability through regular independently conducted pay equity audits
• We pair program every day and prioritize empathy in our pairing practices
• We build each other up and combat imposter syndrome, stereotype threat, and the confidence gap

PLEASE NOTE: applications which do not include thoughtful responses to our application questions will be disregarded.