Engineering Manager – Engineering Productivity – Pleo

Before we can tell you about the specifics of the job it’s important that you understand how we define Engineering Productivity. For that, we’re going to look at the Roman Empire.

Have you ever really considered the size of the Roman Empire? It stretched from northern Africa to northern England. That’s close to 5000 km from end to end. All held together with military might. But armies are expensive, so how do you keep the smallest possible army?

Roads. You make it so that your armies can be where they need to be as fast as possible.

The Roman road builders didn’t dictate the movements of the armies, but they made it easy for the armies to go where they needed to go. That’s what we do in Engineering Productivity. We leave the other teams with autonomy and end-to-end responsibility, but try to make that as easy as possible.

Like everyone else in Pleo we strive to be customer-centric. What makes us different is that our customers are the other Engineers. We listen to them and build what most of them will need, what will create the most value.

Pleo is scaling. Fast. Which means more engineers, which means an even greater need for us in Engineering Productivity. This is where you come in.

Currently, we have 4 teams, very soon 5, and it will only grow from there. Each team will have a Lead, but we need someone to bring the teams together and lead them. You will have 2-3 teams, to begin with, the others will be managed by our current Engineering Manager who also runs Engineering Productivity.

As you can imagine there are many different aspects to Engineering Productivity in Pleo, but the one we want you to focus most on is the concept of DevOps. You’re the right person if you’re keen on questions like “what will we need to build to make it easier for the other teams to manage their software end-to-end?”.

So besides the knowledge of DevOps, who are we looking for? We’re looking for someone who is delighted to see great software shipped, and is a motivating force rallying behind the people who ship it. If this is you, you love people, and you’re an engineer: you know that things like inefficient processes can be a major demotivating factor to people. You come in with designs to make things work better. You’re at ease stepping into a technical discussion or taking an important stakeholder meeting with a goal to remove roadblocks to help the team to move forward.

In short, we’re looking for a leader, but what makes a great leader at Pleo? Unlike most job specs, it’s important for us to explain who we are through the leadership style that we represent – and are looking for – in our engineering manager. Our type of leaders:

• Our leadership style is grounded by our product values: we believe in delegation, trust, autonomy, and transparency.
• We need a leader who can take a leap of faith in their people to do the job and to make the bets they best believe in.
• As we scale (especially at the speed that we do!) it’s easy to start to centralize responsibilities. The Pleo product works against that by delegating spending to everyone. So too, as leaders at Pleo, do we delegate responsibilities, decisions, and tasks even at scale. It can be hard, but this is the trust we show our people – and we believe that this is how you can scale a company in a smart and effective way.
• We don’t believe in a traditional hierarchy and won’t work well with someone who believes that titles trump good ideas.
• We work with a lot of compassion: we treat mental wellbeing and sick leave seriously, we listen when people aren’t okay and we make sure we can cater to that.
• We are inclusive and push that agenda to everyone: we need to be the ones who set the standard here.

Your leadership style:

• We always say that we hire people who we would want to be our boss, irrespective of the role they’re in (from Customer Support student workers to co-founder!). That should be the feeling we’re left with when any of us speak to you.
• We are looking for someone who cares deeply about individuals as human beings – we focus on authentic leadership and are actively trying to develop ourselves in this space.
• We hope that you will be able to show vulnerability, radical transparency, and a listening ear to those around you.
• We truly believe that with this type of style you and your team will set an incredible path forward – and that path will get us to incredible places. We want an engineering manager whose team will be standing on the top of the mountain with them – celebrating together and not left behind exhausted on the path below.

You will thrive in this role if you:

• Have a passion for people management. You thrive to see your team and individuals growing and shipping great software.
• Like to work with cross-functional teams and other stakeholders to align engineering function with product & business direction and goals. You think like a technologist in core and optimize for both customer and the business.
• Enjoy design and optimization of teams and processes to maximize their efficiency. You are comfortable to step into technical discussions or take important stakeholder meetings with a goal to remove roadblocks allowing the team to move forward.
• Are a strong communicator, with both technical and commercial stakeholders.

What this Role entails:

• Foster an environment where engineers can perform at their best and grow both as individuals and as a team.
• Work closely with the Group Product Manager and Staff Engineers, and set a vision and direction for the group of engineering teams.
• Directly manage Engineering Leads and oversee a group of ~12-20 engineers.
• Drive customer-centric & solution-oriented mindset.
• Continuously improve environment and processes for how we build our product.
• Align technology direction within your area, with other areas as well as with the overall technology direction of the company.
• Represent engineering in key initiatives and projects within the department or across the company and ensure they get delivered.
• Design the organization, objectives and hold a high standard in people, delivery, and technology.
• Responsibility for delivery and outcomes of the engineering teams you lead.

Your colleagues say about you:

• Have a solid track in Software Engineering.
• You can inspire and motivate others.
• Care about helping people grow.
• Are easy to work with and a person they would also enjoy having a coffee with (virtual or not).
• Listen to feedback but is strong enough to drive your own vision.

Your mom says that you:

• Co-ordinated other kids to build huge lego constructions.
• Always come up with the most efficient route to do your errands.
• You know way too much about everything.
• Take on challenges happily.
• Probably work in IT (moms).

Show me the benefits!

• Flexible work: working from home when you want, where you want, why you want to (we trust you)
• Continual learning & development opportunities
• Team camps around the world – remotes flown in (around once a quarter) for team building and learning (hurry up and apply already so we can bring you to the next one)
• Catered lunch

And here are some other nice gestures that we make:

• 25 days holidays (annual)
• Loads of weird and wonderful niche communities to join in the company (we’re talking guerrilla gardening, liquids tasting, the Pleo band, learning to code initiatives, that type of thing)
• A totally pain-free remote working/working from home policy
• Wild enthusiasm and encouragement from us if you want to host MeetUps, events, etc – we’ll help (venue, food etc)