Engineering Manager

About Ashby

Ashby is experiencing exceptional product success and growth, with tens of millions in ARR, growing over 100% year over year, and very low churn. We are building powerful, easy-to-use All-in-One Talent Acquisition software that replaces several venture-backed products, often providing a superior experience. Our notable customers include Notion, Linear, Shopify, and Snowflake. We pride ourselves on a unique Engineering culture that prioritizes speed, quality, and engineer autonomy, encouraging engineers to write product specs, make product decisions, and manage projects without excessive micro-management.

We are doubling our Engineering team in the next year, and we need experienced leadership to scale thoughtfully.

The Role: Engineering Manager

As an Engineering Manager, you will work closely with Abhik (Co-Founder and VP of Engineering) and Colin (Head of EMEA Engineering) to build out the team and continue scaling Ashby's unique culture. This role emphasizes grassroots leadership, managing and hiring three to five engineers across multiple teams and specializations, including Product Engineers, Site Reliability Engineers, and Design Engineers.

Day-to-day Responsibilities

• Provide feedback on product and technical specifications, coaching ICs to make optimal decisions on scope and quality.
• Mentor engineers to independently deliver large, loosely defined projects.
• Actively engage with the codebase to debug issues, implement small fixes, or enhance developer experience, maintaining strong technical skills.

Department and Company-Wide Initiatives

You will also propose and lead broader initiatives, such as:

• Rethinking and improving pull request review processes to enhance speed and feedback quality.
• Designing and refining interview processes based on candidate and team feedback, creating thoughtful and realistic interview experiences.
• Improving data generation and simulation for demo accounts, contributing to the codebase and impacting various business functions.

Our Engineering Culture

Our culture is founded on the belief that a small, talented team, given the right environment, can build high-quality software quickly while maintaining regular hours. We achieve this through:

• Minimal Process & High Ownership: Engineers run their projects, from problem research and product specs to wireframes and end-to-end implementation, relying on active communication over rigid processes.
• Natural Collaboration & Deliberate Communication: We foster an environment of lifelong learners who are humble and kind. Collaboration happens naturally, complemented by research, prototyping, and written proposals to facilitate feedback across time zones. Engineers typically have less than 2 hours of meetings per week.
• Increased Leverage, Not Just Team Size: We invest heavily in great developer tooling (e.g., ~10m CI/CD, 15+ deployments/day) and foundational building blocks (analytics modeling, query language, policy engine, workflow engine, design system) to enable rapid and powerful product creation.
• Commitment to Diversity: We are dedicated to building a diverse team, actively sourcing diverse candidates, offering generous paid family leave, and avoiding LeetCode interviews. Currently, 21% of our engineers are from underrepresented groups, and we are continuously working to improve this.

Why You Should (or Shouldn't) Apply

This role is ideal for (former) engineers who love the craft, enjoy coding, and continuously stay up-to-date with technology. We seek ambitious individuals who challenge the status quo and foster an environment of ownership and autonomy for top-tier engineers. If you believe great leaders are great engineers, thrive on impact through leverage, and are optimistic about scaling a unique engineering culture, Ashby is the place for you.

You shouldn't apply if you dislike coding, prefer strict processes over engineer autonomy, view management as the only growth path, or believe a large engineering team must inevitably compromise on unique culture for consistency.

Interview Process

Our comprehensive interview process reflects the importance of this role, lasting approximately 5 hours and 15 minutes:

• Introduction call with Abhik, VP of Engineering (30m, live)
• Technical screen: pair programming in our actual codebase (1h, live)
• Experience interview: exploring your past leadership (1h, live)
• Interview with Colin, Head of EMEA Engineering (45m, live)
• Interview with Benji, CEO (30m, live)
• Final round: meet Engineers and other Engineering Managers (90m, live)

Reference checks will be conducted near the end. We are happy to provide feedback regardless of the outcome and offer coffee chats to discuss the role further.

Your First Six Months at Ashby

The first three months focus on learning Ashby Engineering and easing into leadership. You'll develop a 6-month plan, refine it, and actively ship product changes and features to understand the IC experience. Our dev environment is quick to set up, allowing you to push your first change on day one. Abhik and you will conduct 30, 60, 90-day, and 6-month reviews to ensure alignment and effective collaboration.

Benefits

• Competitive salary and equity.
• 10-year exercise window for stock options.
• Unlimited PTO.
• Minimum 12 weeks of fully paid parental leave (may be longer based on regional requirements).
• Generous budget for equipment, software, and office furniture.
• $100/month education budget, with conferences covered by manager approval.
• Top-tier health insurance for you and dependents (100% premiums covered by Ashby) in the US, and high-quality supplemental health insurance elsewhere.

Key skills/competency

• Engineering Leadership
• Team Management
• Product Development
• Technical Coaching
• System Design
• Developer Experience
• Process Improvement
• Recruitment Strategy
• Mentorship
• Code Review