Hands On Engineering Manager (Go)

Arrows; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 80,000 - 90,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Benefits

Job summary

Arrows in London is seeking an Engineering Manager to lead a team of six engineers across Backend, Frontend, Data Science and Platform, with a hands-on Go focus.

You will split roughly 50/50 between management and coding, working closely with the Head of Engineering to align discipline leads and delivery goals. This role requires strong Go skills and a passion for scalable systems.

Qualifications

• Strong Go backend engineering.
• Real experience leading a software team in a product environment (≈3 years).
• Solid grounding in distributed and backend systems.
• GCP and Linux experience.
• Enough React and TypeScript to review frontend work.
• Experience across cross-disciplinary teams.
• Comfortable in a smaller scaling business with no dedicated platform team.

Responsibilities

• Hands-on Go backend engineering, roughly half your time.
• Line management for six engineers, including regular 1:1s, development plans and career growth.
• Guiding system design and architecture, including integration of AI/Computer Vision with backend/frontend.
• Running agile delivery with support from a Delivery Manager, owning the backlog with Product.
• Unblocking the team technically across disciplines and refereeing competing priorities.
• Supporting CI/CD, observability and platform reliability.
• Recruitment from defining the role through interviewing to onboarding.
• Reporting engineering KPIs up to the Head of Engineering.

Skills

Go backend

Engineering management

Distributed systems

GCP

Linux

React/TypeScript

Cross-functional collaboration

Small to mid-size company

Tools

Go

GCP

Linux

React

TypeScript

GitHub

CI/CD

Cloudflare

Sentry

Jira

Job description

£80,000 to £90,000 plus benefits London, hybrid, 1 to 2 days onsite per week

Stack: Go, GCP, Linux, React and TypeScript, GitHub and CI/CD, Cloudflare, Sentry, Jira.

The short version

Lead a team of six engineers and keep writing Go. Roughly a 50/50 split between management and hands-on work, and both halves are real.

The company builds AI and computer vision software that inspects railway, highway and industrial infrastructure. Video and LiDAR data goes in, and what comes out tells asset owners which defects to fix before they become failures. The systems are live on major transport networks. It is a long way from another fintech SaaS platform, and if the tech for good angle matters to you, this is one of the few places where it is not marketing copy.

The role

You will lead and develop a team of six engineers across Backend, Frontend, Data Science and Platform, reporting to the Head of Engineering and working alongside the technical leads in each discipline.

Alongside that, you keep building. The backend is Go, and they want someone who still wants to be in it.

Day to day:

• Hands-on Go backend engineering, roughly half your time
• Line management for six engineers, including regular 1:1s, development plans and career growth
• Guiding system design and architecture, including how AI and Computer Vision components integrate with backend and frontend
• Running agile delivery with support from a Delivery Manager, owning the backlog with Product
• Unblocking the team technically across disciplines and refereeing competing priorities
• Supporting CI/CD, observability and platform reliability
• Recruitment, from defining the role through interviewing to onboarding
• Reporting engineering KPIs up to the Head of Engineering

The company

A London technology business, founded just over a decade ago, applying AI, computer vision and machine learning to infrastructure safety and maintenance across rail and highways.

Close-knit, multi-disciplinary and deliberately not corporate. The engineering group spans Computer Vision, Backend, Frontend, Data Science and Platform, and they are scaling globally. The culture is collaborative, opinionated in a healthy way, and short on process for its own sake.

What they are looking for

• Strong Go backend engineering. This one has no flexibility in it.
• Real experience managing engineers. Around three years leading a software team in a product environment. Title is not important. Engineering Manager, Tech Lead or Principal all work, and you do not need to have been a Head of Engineering.
• Solid grounding in distributed and backend systems
• GCP and Linux
• Enough React and TypeScript to review frontend work and hold a sensible conversation about it
• Experience across cross-disciplinary teams, keeping Product, Backend, Frontend and Data Science pulling the same way
• Comfortable in a smaller, scaling business where there is no platform team to hand things to

Useful but not essential:

• Computer Vision or machine learning exposure, TensorFlow or PyTorch
• Python for scripting and data processing
• Platform and DevOps understanding

Who this suits

Someone who has done the management job properly, knows they are good at it, and has no interest in giving up the code to keep doing it.

If the plan is to move away from the keyboard, this is the wrong role. If you want to run a team of six on genuinely interesting problems while staying technical, it is a very good one.