Engineering Manager - Next.js

Vercel Inc.; San Francisco; Presencial; COP 774.359.000 - 1.144.704.000; Jornada completa

Ventajas ofrecidas por este puesto de trabajo

Equity

Healthcare

Learning & growth

Flexible time off

Home office budget

Descripción de la vacante

Vercel Inc. is seeking an Engineering Team Lead for the Next.js team to lead a small group while staying close to the code. You will contribute directly to the framework, review code, and guide architecture and production reliability decisions.

You will work with Product, Design, and other engineers to evolve Next.js across rendering, caching, routing, and tooling, focusing on performance and developer experience. Expect technical leadership with practical coaching.

Formación

• 8+ years of software engineering experience and still hands-on.
• Led engineers or small technical teams (team lead, tech lead, staff engineer, engineering manager or founder).
• Recent experience writing, reviewing, and shipping production code.
• Strong technical judgement across React, framework architecture, or systems behind a large-scale open source project.
• Able to form a clear point of view, write critical code, and bring others along.
• Know when to lead from the front vs. create space for others to own.
• Experience building products or infrastructure for developers with high standards for quality, performance and usability.
• Think in systems and guide a team toward clean abstractions and scalable patterns.
• Comfortable with ambiguity and solving problems from first principles.
• Balance speed and quality, favor incremental delivery with real-world feedback.
• Communicate clearly in writing, facilitate debate, and decide paths when needed.
• Use AI tools in workflow and understand agentic products for developers.

Responsabilidades

• Build and ship Next.js: write production code, review PRs, debug issues, contribute to framework and supporting systems.
• Lead major technical initiatives from exploration through architecture, implementation, rollout, and production follow-through.
• Set technical direction across rendering, caching, routing, build systems, runtime behavior, and tooling.
• Investigate performance regressions, production failures, and developer pain points, turning insights into improvements.
• Raise the engineering bar with patterns for code quality, testing, performance, reliability, and observability.
• Coach through work with pairing, code reviews, and technical feedback.
• Provide focused people leadership: set expectations, give feedback, support career development.
• Improve team execution with lightweight planning and clearer ownership.
• Partner across Vercel with Product, Design, Infrastructure, and other teams to integrate changes.
• Champion open source by engaging with contributors and balancing community needs with priorities.
• Help grow the team through recruiting and mentoring.

Conocimientos

Leadership

Hands-on engineer

Code review

React

Open source

Herramientas

Git

Descripción del empleo

About Vercel:

Vercel is the agentic infrastructure company, freeing people and agents to ship what's next. For more than a decade we've helped builders move from idea to production with speed, security, and exceptional developer experience.

Now we're scaling our products for both agents and people to ship and run software, built in the open and trusted by OpenAI, PayPal, Ramp, Supreme, and millions of developers worldwide.

About the Role

The Next.js team builds the open source framework that powers millions of applications and shapes how developers build for the web. Our work sits at the intersection of React, framework architecture, developer experience, infrastructure, performance, and production reliability.

We are looking for an Engineering Team Lead to help build and lead a team working on Next.js. This is a hands-on player/coach role for an experienced engineer who wants to remain close to the code while helping a small team do its best work.

You will be an engineer first and a manager second. You will contribute directly to the framework, lead major technical initiatives, review code, debug complex production issues, and help make architectural decisions. You will also support the engineers around you through clear direction, thoughtful feedback, and practical coaching.

This is not a traditional people management role. You will spend the majority of your time on technical leadership and engineering execution. You should be comfortable owning difficult parts of the codebase while creating enough context and clarity for others to move quickly.

You will work closely with Product, Design, and engineers across Vercel to guide the evolution of Next.js across rendering, caching, routing, build systems, and developer tooling.

What You Will Do:

• Build and ship Next.js: Write production code, review pull requests, debug difficult issues, and contribute directly to the framework and its supporting systems.
• Lead major technical initiatives: Take ownership of complex projects from initial exploration through architecture, implementation, rollout, and production follow-through.
• Set technical direction: Make sound architectural decisions across rendering, caching, routing, build systems, runtime behavior, and developer tooling.
• Stay close to real problems: Investigate performance regressions, production failures, and developer pain points. Turn what you learn into practical improvements to the framework.
• Raise the engineering bar: Establish strong patterns for code quality, testing, performance, reliability, observability, and incremental delivery.
• Coach through the work: Help engineers grow through pairing, design reviews, code reviews, technical feedback, and shared ownership of challenging problems.
• Provide focused people leadership: Set clear expectations, give candid feedback, support career development, and help maintain a high-trust and accountable team.
• Improve team execution: Create lightweight planning and decision-making practices that clarify ownership, reduce unnecessary coordination, and help the team ship consistently.
• Partner across Vercel: Work with Product, Design, Infrastructure, Developer Experience, and other engineering teams so framework changes integrate cleanly across the Vercel platform.
• Champion open source: Work in public, engage thoughtfully with contributors, and balance community needs with the team’s product and technical priorities.
• Help grow the team: Participate in recruiting, assess technical talent, and help new engineers become productive in a complex codebase.

About You:

• You have 8+ years of software engineering experience and remain highly effective as a hands-on engineer.
• You have led engineers or small technical teams, whether as a team lead, tech lead, staff engineer, engineering manager, or founder.
• You have recent experience writing, reviewing, and shipping production code. You are not looking to step away from engineering execution.
• You have strong technical judgment across React, framework architecture, or the systems behind a large-scale open source project, including rendering, caching, routing, build tooling, and runtime behavior.
• You can take a complex technical problem, form a clear point of view, write the critical code, and bring other engineers along with you.
• You know when to lead from the front and when to create space for someone else to take ownership.
• You have experience building products or infrastructure for developers and understand the quality, performance, stability, and usability standards this audience expects.
• You think in systems and can guide a team toward clean abstractions, consistent framework patterns, and technical decisions that hold up at scale.
• You are comfortable working through ambiguity and solving problems from first principles.
• You balance speed and quality. You favor incremental delivery and real-world feedback while recognizing when foundational infrastructure requires deeper investment.
• You communicate clearly in writing, facilitate productive technical debate, and make decisions when a path forward is needed.
• You use AI tools in your own workflow and have informed opinions about how agentic products should work for developers.

Bonus

• Experience maintaining or contributing to a major open source project, particularly in the React or Next.js ecosystem.
• Experience with compilers, bundlers, caching, rendering systems, or distributed infrastructure.
• Experience leading a small, senior engineering team while continuing to make substantial individual contributions.
• Experience forming a team or technical direction from zero to one.
• Familiarity with the Next.js codebase, though this is not required.

Compensation & Benefits:

• Competitive compensation package, including equity.
• Inclusive healthcare package.
• Learning and growth support, including mentorship and opportunities to attend events that build your network and skills.
• Flexible time off.
• The equipment you need to do your role, plus a work-from-home budget to outfit your space.

The San Francisco, CA base pay range for this role is $230,000 to $340,000. Actual salary will be based on job-related skills, experience, and location. Compensation outside San Francisco may be adjusted based on employee location.

Disclosures:

• Privacy: Please review our Job Applicant Privacy Policy for more information on how we handle your data.
• Equal Opportunity:Vercel is committed to fostering and empowering an inclusive community within our organization. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation, national origin, citizenship, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Vercel encourages everyone to apply for our available positions, even if they don't necessarily check every box on the job description.