Ashby is looking for an Engineering Manager in the UK to help shape a high-trust, high-autonomy engineering culture where engineers take full ownership of problems from spec to delivery. This role emphasizes team development, coaching, and creating an environment where engineers can thrive with minimal process overhead, while staying technically involved through hands-on work and system improvements.
What You'll Do
- Build and develop a growing team of engineers in Europe, focusing on individual performance, process, and culture
- Coach engineers to take ownership of large, loosely defined projects and deliver them with minimal intervention
- Provide feedback on product and technical specs to help engineers identify scope cuts or quality improvements
- 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
- Facilitate change at individual and organizational levels through empathetic communication and feedback
- Focus on building systems that empower engineers to do their best work consistently with little distraction
- Observe, correct, praise, and code alongside the team (for junior EMs with ≤6 direct reports)
- Stay off the critical path while remaining technically engaged
- Identify patterns in team behavior and build automation to improve processes
- Support engineers in making product decisions rather than making those decisions yourself
What We're Looking For
- Passionate about both engineering management and staying technically hands-on
- Loves being technical and can hold in-depth conversations with engineers across infra, backend, and frontend
- Enjoys solving management problems: driving people to be their best, giving difficult feedback, building supportive systems
- Holds team to a high standard and is not afraid to give detailed feedback, even to top performers
- Excellent and empathetic communicator who can navigate beliefs, opinions, and past experiences of engineers
- Knows what exceptional engineers look like and has thought deeply about how to recruit and grow them
- Thrives in high-trust, high-autonomy environments and can build strong feedback loops
- Willing to challenge status quo processes and believe a different engineering culture is possible at scale
- Believes engineers should own projects end-to-end, including user conversations, product specs, and UX design
- Does not want to make all product decisions but instead build a team capable of making them independently
- Optimistic about building a large engineering team that functions differently than traditional models
Nice to Have
- Has built automation to improve team processes or developer experience
- Has experience introducing new processes that increase team efficiency (e.g., enabling PRs to merge without human review)
- Has experience with transparent pay systems and clear promotion mechanics
- Has managed teams with a focus on focus time and minimizing meeting load
- Has worked in startups or fast-moving environments where leaders wear multiple hats
Technical Stack
- CI/CD pipeline (~10m build time)
- Frequent deployments (at least 5x per day)
- Analytics modeling and query language
- Policy engine
- Workflow engine
- Design system
- Developer experience tools (all engineers contribute)
Team & Environment
- 25+ engineers (growing)
- Engineering team in Europe reporting to Director of Engineering, Europe; EMs typically have ≤6 direct reports
- Reporting to Director of Engineering, Europe
Benefits & Compensation
- Opportunity to work on impactful projects off the critical path that improve the business (e.g., demo data generation)
- Environment that protects focus time — engineers can focus 36h out of a 40h work week
- Culture of lifelong learning, humility, and kindness
- High-trust, high-autonomy environment with minimal process overhead
- Regular working hours enabled by efficient processes and tooling
- Collaborative culture with natural collaboration and deliberate communication
- Access to written proposals, research, and prototyping for cross-timezone feedback
- Managerial support to protect creative focus time
- Opportunity to stay hands-on with coding and system improvements
- Work with experienced, talented, and collaborative engineers
- Transparent pay system with clear promotion mechanics
- Diverse and inclusive team culture
Work Mode
- Local-country role based in the UK
- High autonomy and trust; focus time protected; leaders wear multiple hats; feedback loops enable fast adaptation
Diverse teams drive innovation and better outcomes. Ashby is committed to building an inclusive environment regardless of race, gender, or other personal characteristics.
