Engineering Manager - #34722

As the Engineering Manager, you will take on a player-coach role, responsible for building and leading a team of 5–6 engineers. You will oversee development, ensure product stability, and foster a strong engineering culture in Manila. This role involves close collaboration with the UK-based VP of Engineering, Agile Delivery Manager, Product, and Design teams.

Duties and Responsibilities:

Team Leadership & Development

• Recruit, hire, and onboard 5-6 engineers (2 QA, 3-4 Full-Stack) within your first 3 months
• Conduct face-to-face interviews in Manila, partnering with our VPE and Head of Talent remotely
• Hold regular 1-1s, performance reviews, and career development conversations
• Foster technical excellence and continuous learning within your team

Hands-On Technical Contribution

• Spend 30-40% of your time coding alongside your team once the team is established
• Conduct thorough code reviews ensuring adherence to the company’s standards
• Provide PHP/Laravel expertise for mentoring and problem-solving
• Make technical decisions for bug fixes and customer enhancements
• Use monitoring tools (Sentry, Datadog) to proactively identify and resolve issues

Delivery & Collaboration

• Own the RUN workstream (80% bug fixes, 20% customer enhancements)
• Partner with our Agile Delivery Manager to define your team's delivery process
• Ensure P0/P1/P2 bugs are resolved within SLAs
• Participate in daily standups with VPE and ADM
• Maintain 9am-12pm UK time-availability for critical collaboration

Knowledge Transfer & Quality

• Lead knowledge absorption from UK team during ramp-up period
• Ensure your team documents learnings and creates runbooks
• Use our monitoring and alerting using Sentry and Datadog
• Partner with our Senior Customer Support Engineer on bug investigations

Requirements

Must-have Skills / Qualification:

• Proven track record as a player-coach in similar sized teams
• Strong hands-on PHP/Laravel expertise that's current and deep
• Experience building and scaling offshore/remote teams
• Background in maintaining systems whilst ensuring stability

Technical Excellence

• Expert-level PHP/Laravel knowledge for code reviews and mentoring
• Strong understanding of MySQL, Redis, and caching strategies
• Experience with AWS services (RDS, EKS preferred)
• Proficiency with monitoring tools (Sentry, Datadog)
• Understanding of CI/CD practices and deployment pipelines

Leadership & Communication

• Demonstrated ability to recruit and build teams from scratch
• Experience managing mid to senior-level engineers
• Excellent English communication (written and verbal)
• Strong async communication skills for distributed team collaboration
• Cultural sensitivity and ability to bridge working styles
• Ability to balance hands-on coding with management responsibilities

Advantageous Experience/Skills:

• Experience in B2B SaaS or cybersecurity domains
• Familiarity with enterprise integrations (SCIM, SAML, OAuth)
• Understanding of GDPR and data protection requirements
• Knowledge of agile methodologies (Scrum/Kanban)
• Understanding of frontend technologies and frameworks.