Engineering Manager (Front-End) - REMOTE

Hi I’m Colin, Director of Engineering, Europe. How do you feel about software engineers writing product specs, making product decisions, and not breaking down projects into individual tickets? If that sounds exciting (even if a bit scary), read on because I’m looking for an engineering manager to help us build a different type of engineering team and culture at Ashby. Time and again, I have witnessed engineers knowing what needs to be done yet being unable to get things done because of “the process” or because “more data is needed.” Some of the most effective projects have been skunkworks projects, where engineers have taken total ownership of a problem and driven it to completion. we’re building an environment that is optimistic about what engineers can own and achieve and embraces the innovative engineers (and frankly, often stays out of their way).

To accomplish this, our engineering leaders need to think deeply about individual performance, process, and culture - not running sprint planning or driving product and technical decisions. You’ll focus on building your team, their skills to thrive with the ownership they’re given, and an environment that empowers them to do their best work consistently, with little distraction. This enables them to spend time with our teams observing, correcting, praising, and, yes, coding. You’ll help me manage the growing team of engineers in Europe.

In Addition To Working With Engineers You’ll Also Get To Work On Projects Yourselves. Some Examples Of Work Our Engineering Leaders Have Done

Provide feedback on product and technical specs to help engineers identify where to cut scope or improve quality. Grow engineers to the point where they can take large, loosely defined projects, and deliver them with little intervention. They still ask for help when needed - the difference is that they’re driving.

Jump into our systems and code to debug a customer issue, ship a small bug fix, or improve our developer experience. Engineering leaders at Ashby are great engineers and enjoy keeping their skills up-to-date (while staying off the critical path).

Improve how we generate and simulate data in demo accounts. It’s a project off the critical path, but it helps you keep up-to-date on our codebase while immensely impacting the business, from Engineering to QA to Sales.

I had two experiences early in my career that set me on my path. Deeply complex problems with long-term impact both on the company and on people’s lives. By spending time thinking deeply about everybody’s pay and ensuring the mechanics of promotion were clear, I put the team in a place where they could see a peer was paid more than them, and it not be a problem.

I sometimes indulge myself and spend a morning writing some code to improve tests or provide better abstractions. It can be hard to find seasoned engineering leaders who haven’t succumbed to the status quo in some way or another. What We’re Building

When we started Ashby, we saw the opposite with Talent Acquisition (TA) software. Recruiting teams were leveling up how they did their work, but instead of software meeting this new standard, it held them back.

Recruiting teams wanted to schedule candidates faster, track interviewer preparation and quality, and do it with half the headcount. TA software didn’t help.

As hiring managers, we know TA is a critical function, and as engineers, we know software can do better. Software that’s intelligent and powerful. Software that provides insights into where they’re failing and automates or simplifies many of the tasks they’re underwater with. As we’ve set the standard for excellence in TA software, HR teams have pulled us into solving their problems in areas like onboarding and performance management.

Engineering Leadership Comes In Many Flavors, Not All Of Which Fit Our Model. I Thought I’d Outline Some Things I’m Looking For To Help You Decide If This Fits What You’re Looking For

You love being technical and can hold in-depth conversations with direct reports from infra to backend to frontend.

We want people who get excited about driving people to be their best, giving difficult feedback, and building systems that make this easier

You’re good at thinking about product, business, and maybe even design, but you’re not interested in calling the shots and are more interested in building a team that can make the best decisions without you.

We're a young startup where leaders wear multiple hats, and you'll build your own (high-speed) on-ramp through developing strong feedback loops.

You don’t enjoy coding or don’t find time to stay up-to-date on technology.

You’ve gotten into management because it was the only growth path available

You're happy with a team of engineers that are predominantly early-career, mid-career, or don't thrive with ownership or autonomy. A staff or principal engineer to you is someone who spends most of their time project managing or doing architecture reviews.

You’re not optimistic or convinced that we can build a large engineering team that functions differently than the status quo. Engineering Culture

Our Engineering Culture Is Motivated By Abhik And Benji’s (our Co-founders) Belief That a Small Talented Team, Given The Right Environment, Can Build High-quality Software Fast (and Work Regular Hours!). Minimal process with ownership over decisions normally made by product and design

Natural collaboration and deliberate communication

Putting effort into building a diverse team

They took customer problems and relentlessly drove them to solutions that were not only successful but often brilliant and creative. Traditional product-development processes aren’t meant for the best engineers. So, at Ashby, every Engineer runs their project. Product Managers) and pull folks in to help (e.g., Our engineering team consists of lifelong learners who are talented but also humble and kind (meet them here!). We Built Ashby With The Quality, Breadth, And Depth That Many Customers Would Expect From Much Larger Teams Over Larger Time Scales. Building blocks to create powerful and customizable products fast. At the core of Ashby is a set of common components (analytics modeling and query language, policy engine, workflow engine, design system) that we constantly improve. Each improvement to a common component cascades throughout our app (short video below).

We think of AI as a way to automate the mundane parts of building and maintaining high-quality software. We write in detail about our philosophy, current use of AI, and future plans for AI in Engineering here.

And a Demo Of One Of These Building Blocks

Put Effort into Diversity

Having seen my mother and partner build their careers as minority women in non-diverse fields, I want to make sure Ashby creates opportunities for the next generation of engineers from underrepresented groups.

Today, 25% of engineers and 50% of our engineering leaders at Ashby are from underrepresented groups. We are taking conscious steps to improve, like sourcing diverse candidates, providing generous paid family leave, no leetcode interviews, and more.

Work-Life Balance: We work with urgency and ambition to build excellent software, but we don’t need to prove out a new software category or product-market fit. That requires ingenuity and thoughtfulness, and that doesn’t happen with unrealistic deadlines or sleepless nights.

Our remote, low-meeting, high-ownership culture gives you a lot of flexibility in how you structure your days and weeks. We offer unlimited PTO, and you actually get to use it. Abhik blocks off 1.5 hours every morning to spend with his daughter and drop her off at school. No one bats an eye if I have to take my kid to a doctor’s appointment or have to work weird hours because childcare fell through.”

At Ashby, Our Team And Interview Process Want To Help You Show Your Best Self. We’ll Dive Into Past Projects And Simulate Working Together. Past Experience Deep Dive (1h) - Discuss your past experience as an engineering leader.

Coffee Chat with VP of Engineering (1h) - Spend time with our VP of Engineering and get to know each other.

Meet the Team (2h) - At this point, the engineering leadership team is excited about you and you'll meet our CEO, Engineers, Product Managers, and some other folks on the team.

I’m sharing our tech stack with the caveat that we don’t require previous experience in it (but a love of typed languages is helpful ): TypeScript (frontend & backend), React, GraphQL API, Node.js, Postgres, Redis.

When they joined Ashby, many of our engineers switched from other languages like Swift and Kotlin (Ben), platforms like iOS (Tom) and Windows (Adam). Competitive salary and equity.

• Unlimited PTO, and we will encourage you to take it.
• A minimum of 12 weeks of fully paid parental leave, covered by Ashby. Generous equipment, software, and office furniture budget. If you’re in the US, we offer top-tier health insurance for you and your dependents, with 100% of premiums covered by Ashby. In other countries, we provide high-quality supplemental health insurance for you and your dependents, also fully covered by us.

We’re being deliberate about building that environment from the ground up. Ashby provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetics, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. Please be advised that we may use artificial intelligence-driven tools to assist our recruitment team in screening, assessing, and selecting candidates for this position.

Compensation Range: £110K - £200K