Engineering Manager

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Engineering Manager based in Netherlands.

This is an engineering leadership role at the intersection of software development, AI, and logistics technology. You’ll lead a team responsible for building products that modernize how global freight is priced, booked, and managed. The role combines people leadership, technical judgment, delivery ownership, and close partnership with Product. You’ll help engineers become more effective in an AI-led development environment where agents increasingly handle implementation while engineers own architecture, quality, and outcomes. As a player-coach, you’ll remain technically engaged while focusing primarily on growing people and improving team performance. You’ll also work directly with customers and help shape the next generation of AI-enabled engineering practices.

• Own engineering delivery, ensuring teams ship high-quality software predictably while maintaining clear commitments, priorities, and standards.
• Lead, coach, and develop engineers through meaningful one-to-ones, career development, feedback, performance management, and thoughtful team practices.
• Own engineering hiring, including defining the hiring bar, conducting interviews, assessing candidates, and setting new hires up for success.
• Partner closely with Product as an equal contributor, shaping roadmaps, negotiating scope, challenging requirements when appropriate, and protecting teams from unnecessary delivery churn.
• Help the team increase its effectiveness with AI-led engineering by improving how engineers use AI agents, sharing successful practices, removing friction, and evolving development workflows.
• Contribute to the evolution toward more autonomous AI-agent workflows, helping establish appropriate guardrails, harnesses, review standards, and engineering practices.
• Stay technically involved for approximately one day per week through code reviews, architecture discussions, or selected engineering work.
• Engage directly with customers, including freight forwarders and airlines, to understand problems firsthand and bring engineers closer to real-world user needs.
• Improve team systems and processes by identifying delivery bottlenecks, strengthening workflows, and using data to drive operational improvements.
• Help establish consistent engineering practices across distributed teams while maintaining a high bar for technical quality and customer impact.

Requirements

• Proven experience managing software engineers, including hiring, coaching, performance management, team development, and predictable delivery.
• Strong backend engineering background with solid architecture instincts and sufficient technical depth to contribute credibly to engineering decisions.
• Demonstrated delivery experience, with a track record of shipping meaningful products or features against defined timelines and an ability to explain both successes and setbacks.
• Experience building and scaling teams, including assessing candidates for potential, closing senior hires, and creating effective onboarding experiences.
• Genuine interest in AI-led software development and willingness to use AI engineering tools directly rather than managing the practice from the outside.
• Strong systems thinking and the ability to diagnose organizational or delivery problems and improve the underlying process rather than simply increasing effort.
• Strong partnership skills with Product and the ability to jointly shape what should be built, why it matters, and when it should be delivered.
• Customer orientation and willingness to engage directly with users and bring engineering teams into those conversations.
• Excellent written and verbal English, with the ability to communicate clearly in a remote-first environment.
• Strong judgment, ownership, and comfort making decisions with incomplete information.
• Low-ego leadership style, openness to feedback, and willingness to change course when new information warrants it.
• Experience with Python 3, Flask, gRPC, PostgreSQL, Redis, Celery, Kubernetes, and GCP is a plus.
• Familiarity with Vue.js, distributed teams across multiple countries, or introducing new ways of working is advantageous.

Benefits

• Equity eligibility as part of the overall compensation package.
• Company-provided Claude Code and other AI tools required for the role.
• €650 one-time home office budget.
• Choice of MacBook or Dell laptop, provided before the start date.
• Access to coworking spaces through a dedicated partner network.
• 24 paid vacation days in addition to local public holidays and special leave.
• Two company-wide offsites each year, plus team trips.
• Permanent full-time employment.
• Remote-first working environment across approved European-time-zone hiring locations.
• Regular opportunities to meet colleagues in person, including company-wide gatherings twice a year.
• Visa support is currently available in Germany.
• Opportunity to work at the forefront of AI-enabled software engineering and help shape emerging development practices.