Ashby is seeking an Engineering Manager to help build a high-trust, high-autonomy engineering culture in Europe. The role focuses on developing engineers to take full ownership of projects, from problem understanding to delivery, while fostering a supportive and innovative environment that minimizes process overhead and maximizes impact.
What You'll Do
- Build and develop a team of engineers to thrive with high ownership and autonomy
- Focus on individual performance, process, and culture rather than running sprint planning or driving product decisions
- Provide feedback on product and technical specs to help engineers identify where to cut scope or improve quality
- Coach engineers to make the right product and technical decisions independently
- Grow engineers to deliver large, loosely defined projects with minimal intervention
- Jump into systems and code to debug customer issues, ship bug fixes, or improve developer experience
- Improve internal systems such as data generation and simulation in demo accounts
- Observe, correct, praise, and support direct reports through regular engagement
- Maintain technical skills while ensuring not to be on the critical path for delivery
- Identify patterns in team behavior and build systems or automation to improve efficiency
- Facilitate change at both individual and organizational levels through empathetic communication
What We're Looking For
- Passionate about both engineering management and staying technically hands-on
- Loves being technical and can hold in-depth conversations across infra, backend, and frontend
- Enjoys solving management problems, including giving difficult feedback and building supportive systems
- Holds team to a high standard and is not afraid to give feedback, even to top performers
- Excellent and empathetic communicator who can navigate beliefs, opinions, and past experiences
- Knows what exceptional engineers look like and how to grow them
- Thinks deeply about product, business, and design but empowers team to make decisions
- Thrives in high-trust, high-autonomy environments
- Willing to challenge status quo and build a different kind of engineering culture
- Believes large engineering teams can function differently than traditional models without compromising delivery
Nice to Have
- Has built automation or systems to improve team efficiency
- Has experience introducing processes that reduce unnecessary review overhead (e.g., enabling PRs to merge without human review)
- Has built abstractions that allow engineers to extend or improve automation
- Has created transparent pay systems or promotion frameworks
- Has managed teams with 6 or fewer direct reports to enable deep engagement
Technical Stack
- CI/CD systems (with ~10m build times)
- Developer tooling and experience improvements
- Analytics modeling and query language
- Policy engine
- Workflow engine
- Design system
- Internal data generation and simulation tools
Team & Environment
- Team of 25+ engineers in Europe reporting to the Director of Engineering, Europe
- High trust and high autonomy
- Engineers own projects end-to-end (user research, product specs, UX design, implementation)
- Collaboration happens naturally; communication is deliberate
- Focus time is sacred
- Invest in great developer tooling and deploy at least 5x a day
- Build reusable components that amplify impact (analytics, policy, workflow engines)
- Diverse teams drive innovation and better outcomes
- Optimistic about what engineers can achieve with ownership
- Managers are hands-on but not on the critical path
- Transparency in pay and promotion systems
Benefits & Compensation
- Opportunity to work on impactful projects off the critical path that improve developer experience and business outcomes
- Support to maintain technical skills while managing
- Focus time protected — engineers can focus 36h out of a 40h work week
- Managerial support to protect creative work time
- Collaborative, humble, and kind team culture
- Environment that values lifelong learning
- Work regular hours while delivering high-quality software
- High autonomy and trust in decision-making
- Exposure to product, business, and design thinking
- Opportunity to shape engineering culture from the ground up
- Work with experienced co-founders who value small, talented teams
Work Mode
Local to Europe with high autonomy, deliberate communication across time zones, emphasis on protecting focus time and minimizing meeting load.
Diverse teams drive innovation and better outcomes. Ashby is committed to building an inclusive environment that is open and welcoming to everyone, regardless of race, gender, or preference.
