Engineering Manager

Remote in EU | Long-term B2B Contract Role Overview We are looking for an experienced Engineering Manager to lead and develop engineers working on modern, cloud-based software products. This is a people-first engineering leadership role for someone who has built their career in software engineering and has since developed substantial experience managing engineers. You will not carry an individual contributor delivery load, but you should have enough technical depth to understand the systems your teams build, challenge assumptions, assess engineering quality and contribute meaningfully to technical discussions. Your focus will be on building strong engineering teams: developing people, raising performance, improving team effectiveness, hiring well and creating an environment in which engineers can do their best work. The environment is international, distributed and technically demanding, combining cloud-native engineering, AI-enabled products, CI/CD and production systems operating at scale. Key Responsibilities: Line-manage software engineers through regular 1:1s, feedback, career development and structured growth plans.Own performance management across your team, including objectives, formal reviews, promotion cases and difficult performance conversations when required.Lead hiring for your area, from defining capability needs through interviewing and final hiring decisions.Support new engineers through structured onboarding and probation, identifying gaps and acting on them early.Develop engineers toward senior individual contributor and technical leadership career paths.Use engineering and delivery signals such as throughput, cycle time, DORA metrics and incident trends to identify people, capability and staffing issues.Work closely with technical leaders and other engineering functions to ensure teams have the right skills, capacity and support to deliver effectively.Maintain enough technical proximity to challenge estimates, understand technical risk and evaluate engineering practices without becoming the team's primary technical owner.Support healthy and sustainable operational practices, including appropriate distribution of on-call responsibilities.Identify capability gaps, performance risks, engagement issues and retention risks early and communicate them clearly to engineering leadership.Drive continuous improvement across engineering teams and turn identified problems into concrete actions with measurable outcomes.Lead initiatives that improve engineering effectiveness beyond your immediate team, such as developer enablement, operational maturity, internal automation, security or cloud efficiency.Contribute to a consistent engineering management standard across a distributed organization. Requirements: 8+ years of professional software engineering experience.3+ years of genuine line-management experience with software engineers.Demonstrable ownership of 1:1s, performance reviews, career development, hiring and performance management.Experience making difficult people decisions, including managing underperformance and, where necessary, exits.A proven record of developing engineers into more senior roles, technical leadership positions or expanded areas of responsibility.Strong enough technical foundations to evaluate engineering quality and participate credibly in discussions around architecture, cloud systems, delivery practices and operational risk.Familiarity with modern cloud-native engineering environments, CI/CD and production software operations.Working understanding of incidents, on-call practices, observability and production reliability.Familiarity with modern AI-enabled or LLM-based products and engineering environments.Experience using engineering metrics and delivery data to identify problems and inform management decisions.Ability to balance empathy and support with clear expectations, accountability and direct feedback.Strong communication skills and confidence working across engineering, product and operational stakeholders.Fluent English and experience working effectively with distributed or international teams.Experience in regulated, high-availability or enterprise environments such as fintech, banking, telecommunications or similar is highly valued.Strong written and spoken English (C1+)Based within the European Union and able to work on a B2B contract What's on Offer: Fully remote work within the European UnionLong-term B2B engagementMore than 20 days of paid time offApple equipmentTraining and professional-development budgetSenior engineering leadership role with meaningful ownership of people development and team effectiveness.Opportunity to work with experienced engineers building modern cloud and AI-enabled products.International and distributed engineering environment.Significant scope to influence engineering practices beyond your immediate team.Clear separation between people leadership and individual-contributor delivery, allowing you to focus on building stronger engineers and teams.Opportunity to lead cross-functional initiatives with visible organizational impact.Collaborative environment working alongside senior technical and engineering leadership. Diversity and Inclusion Commitment We are dedicated to creating and sustaining an inclusive, respectful workplace for all -regardless of gender, ethnicity, or background. We actively encourage applicants from all identities and experience levels to apply and bring your authentic self to our fast-paced, supportive team.