Engineering Manager - UK

Ashby; Glasgow; On-site; GBP 91,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Equity options

Unlimited PTO

Educational budget

Job summary

Ashby, a company in Glasgow, is looking for an Engineering Manager to lead a team of talented engineers. This role is about fostering ownership and innovation, guiding projects while also remaining hands-on with technology. You will provide feedback on product specs and help engineers thrive in their projects.

The ideal candidate has a balance of technical expertise and a passion for management, capable of mentoring while driving the team’s performance. Join Ashby to shape the future of software engineering culture within a dynamic startup environment.

Qualifications

• Passion for management and technical roles.
• Excellent communication skills for team dynamics.
• Experience in software development and engineering practices.

Responsibilities

• Provide feedback on product and technical specifications.
• Grow engineers to handle large projects with autonomy.
• Debug customer issues and improve developer experience.
• Manage a team of engineers and support their growth.

Skills

Technical leadership

Coaching engineers

Effective communication

Problem-solving

Ability to influence

Job description

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.

We want a team that can take fully owned projects and deliver them with minimal intervention. Engineers should be able to choose what to build, write specs, and set directions. Our processes should encourage ownership, not bureaucracy.

How We Build

Our engineering leaders focus on building their team, coaching them to thrive with ownership, and creating an environment that empowers them to do their best work consistently, with minimal distraction. For junior EMs we limit to around six direct reports, keeping the focus on people rather than processes.

We’ve already assembled an experienced, talented, and collaborative team of 25+ engineers. As an engineering manager, you will help me grow and manage this growing team of engineers in Europe.

Typical Projects and Responsibilities

• Provide feedback on product and technical specs to help engineers identify where to cut scope or improve quality. You influence and coach ICs to reach the right decisions.
• Grow engineers to handle large, loosely defined projects, delivering them with little intervention. They still ask for help when needed, but 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.
• Improve how we generate and simulate data in demo accounts. It’s a project off the critical path that keeps you up to date on the codebase while impacting the business across Engineering, QA, and Sales.

Why Be a Manager?

I learned early that a supportive manager who asks thoughtful questions can make a huge difference. I also experienced the opposite, which motivated me to become a manager. I love solving deep, complex problems that have long‑term impact on the company and people’s lives. I also enjoy staying technical: I spend mornings writing code to improve tests or abstractions. If I couldn’t be a manager, I’d be happy as an individual contributor.

I’m looking for someone who is passionate about both management and being technical, spot patterns, improve processes, and build automation that powers those improvements.

Qualities We Seek

• You love being technical and can hold in-depth conversations with direct reports from infrastructure to backend to frontend.
• You enjoy management problems. You get excited about driving people to be their best, giving difficult feedback, and building systems that facilitate that.
• You hold your team to a high standard and don’t shy away from getting into the details, even with top performers.
• You are an excellent and empathetic communicator, able to navigate beliefs, opinions, and past experiences to convince and be open to feedback.
• You know what exceptional engineers look like and understand how to recruit them and grow them.
• You’re good at thinking about product, business, and design, but you prefer to build a team that makes the best decisions, not to be the sole decision‑maker.
• You thrive in high‑trust, high‑autonomy environments. We’re a young startup where leaders wear multiple hats and you’ll build your own high‑speed onboarding through feedback loops.

Traits That Might Be a Red Flag

• You don’t enjoy coding or can’t find time to stay up to date on technology.
• You got into management only as a growth path option.
• You want to make all product decisions instead of empowering your team.
• You’re fine with a team of engineers that are early‑career or mid‑career and don’t thrive with ownership or autonomy.
• A staff or principal engineer for you is someone who spends most of their time project‑managing or doing architecture reviews.
• You are not optimistic or convinced we can build a large engineering team differently than the status quo. You think that at some size processes must be implemented for consistent delivery.

What We’re Building

Ashby provides talent teams with intelligent, powerful software that identifies where they’re failing and automates many of the tasks that distract recruiters. We focus on a smooth hiring experience, powered by data and automation. We have a strong customer base, revenue growth, and a solid runway backed by investors such as YCombinator.

Engineering Culture

Our culture is built on the belief that a small, talented team with the right environment can build high‑quality software fast. Collaboration happens naturally; we value humility, kindness, and learning. We hold focus time sacred and allow engineers to focus 36 hours out of a 40‑hour week.

Team Growth Approach

• Great developer tooling. Our CI/CD finishes quickly and we deploy multiple times a day.
• Reusable building blocks to create powerful, customizable products quickly.
• AI‑powered tooling that automates mundane tasks such as triaging customer issues, suggesting fixes, and conducting code reviews.

Interview Process

• Intro Call (30m) – Discuss your application, align on role responsibilities, and answer questions about Ashby.
• Past Experience Deep Dive (1h) – Discuss your past experience as an engineering leader.
• Technical Screen (1h) – Add a feature to Ashby; you’ll understand a specific part of the codebase and write less than 15 lines of code.
• Coffee Chat with VP of Engineering (1h) – Spend time with our VP of Engineering and get to know each other.
• Meet the Team (2h) – You meet the CEO, Engineers, Product Managers, and others on the team.

Technology Stack

TypeScript (frontend & backend), Node.js, React, Apollo GraphQL, Postgres, Redis. Prior experience is not required.

Benefits

• Competitive salary and equity.
• 10‑year exercise window for stock options.
• Unlimited PTO with a recommendation of four weeks per year.
• Generous equipment, software, and office furniture budget.
• $100 per month education budget for conferences and other learning resources.

Equal Opportunity Statement

Ashby provides equal employment opportunities 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. We are committed to a diverse and inclusive workforce and welcome people from all backgrounds, experiences, perspectives, and abilities.

Ashby is committed to a fair and transparent hiring process. This advertisement is for an active, existing vacancy within our organization. Artificial intelligence‑driven tools may be used to assist in screening, assessing, and selecting candidates for this position.

Compensation Range: £91K ‑ £200K