Senior Engineering Manager

About OpenSesame

OpenSesame helps develop the world’s most productive and admired workforces. With the most comprehensive catalog of elearning courses from the world’s top publishers, we are here to help you every step of the way, from finding courses, mapping them to your core competencies, syncing them with your LMS to increasing utilization and improving your L&D programs. Not only will you have the flexibility of multiple purchasing options from OpenSesame, you’ll find it simple to use and administer your e-learning courses. To learn more, visit www.opensesame.com/about.

About the Job

We are seeking an experienced Senior Engineering Manager who will help develop their team’s use of Extreme Programming (XP). You will provide the context, skills, and process needed for your team to deliver valuable work with a high level of quality, accuracy and reliability.

“Enable your team to deliver great work without you.”

You will be the senior of two managers of a fully-remote team that consists of 14 engineers across North America, South America, UK, and India. Team members in the western hemisphere will report to you and team members in India will report to the other manager, who is also located in India. You will collaborate closely with the other manager to support the team as a whole.

This position involves regular meetings with people in India as well as people in the western US. An early Eastern US schedule, such as 7am-4pm Eastern time, will be required.

Performance Objectives:

In your first 90 days, you will be ramping up and working with your team and stakeholders to understand your teams’ needs and opportunities. You will develop a plan for improvement in collaboration with the VP of Engineering.

People:

• Form rapport with team members, the team’s general manager and other stakeholders, product and UX representatives, and management peers.
• Understand your teams’ current processes.
• Understand stakeholders’ needs and frustrations.
• Understand team members’ needs and frustrations.
• Understand team members’ career goals.
• Collaborate with team leads on team members’ career development spreadsheets.
• Identify team members’ strengths and weaknesses.
• Hire contractors and full-time employees as appropriate.

Product:

• Understand your teams’ vision and current mission.
• Understand how the team’s work fits into the big picture of the organization.
• Understand how to use your teams’ products.
• Work with your teams’ product managers to track mission indicators.
• Work with your teams’ product managers to collect estimates and make forecasts as needed.

Process:

• Establish a division of labor between yourself and the other manager for your team.
• Work with Eng. VP to establish a plan for improving your teams’ capability and capacity, with a focus on introducing and improving XP skills.
• Understand and fulfill organizational governance requirements, including budgeting and reporting.
• Set up a development environment on your computer and check out teams’ code.
• Understand the design and architecture of your teams’ code at a high level.

Within 6 months, you will have established yourself as an expert on your teams’ needs and opportunities. You will have started to act as a leader in the management team.

People:

• Establish a relationship of trust with the team’s other manager.
• Maintain awareness of team dynamics and team members’ interpersonal relationships.
• Develop team members’ intrinsic motivation to do great work.
• Provide or source training, coaching, and/or mentoring for team members’ weak spots.
• Provide coaching, mentoring and/or mediation as needed to continuously improve your team’s team dynamics.
• Develop team members’ skills with an eye towards expanding OpenSesame’s bench strength and future leadership capacity.

Product:

• Ensure the team has the context needed to make excellent decisions without your active involvement.
• Strike a balance between shielding the team from stakeholder distractions and enabling the team to work directly with stakeholders to understand their needs.
• Provide insights to your team about how their work is perceived by internal business stakeholders.

Process:

• Develop your team’s capability to independently take ownership, share leadership, and deliver value, with a focus on XP practices.
• Remove yourself as a bottleneck to team decision making.
• Identify paths for continuously improving developer experience and internal quality.
• Create opportunities for cross-team pollination and growth.
• Advise Eng. VP on how to systemically improve teams’ capability and capacity across the engineering organization.

Management Team:

• Work with management peers to understand other teams’ needs and opportunities.
• Begin to mentor less-experienced managers, with focus on the other manager on your team.

By the end of your first year, you will be a leader in the management team.

• Be a resource that other managers turn to for advice and guidance.
• Take the lead in implementing systemic improvements across teams.
• Work with product management to improve execution of cross-team initiatives.
• Advise Eng. VP on systemic opportunities for improving internal business stakeholder relationships.

Location: This is a remote-first role based in Latin America or Canada. 

Performance Driven: We're looking for self-starters with a track record of delivering excellent results, and we're highly selective about who we hire. We don't focus on typical job requirements; instead, we're interested in specific examples from your past experiences.