Engineering Manager (LAMP Stack)

Confidential; Pakistan; Hybrid; PKR 2,000,000 - 4,500,000; Full time

Job summary

Confidential is seeking an Engineering Manager to lead two squads—Core Systems and AI—and drive delivery across LAMP, MERN, and Python/RAG platforms. The role requires direct hands-on involvement in architecture and development with ~75% coding activity, while mentoring teams and aligning technical decisions with product goals.

You will evaluate RAG pipelines, retrieval strategies, and embeddings, ensuring secure, scalable applications and robust API design across relational and NoSQL databases.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of professional software engineering with 2+ years in management.
• Strong hands-on expertise with the LAMP stack (PHP, Laravel or similar, MySQL, Linux, Apache/Nginx).
• Hands-on MERN stack: MongoDB, Express, React, Node.js.
• Demonstrated hands-on experience building a RAG pipeline, LLM integration, or agentic application.
• Experience with Python frameworks (Django, Flask, FastAPI).
• Experience delivering at least 3 production-grade applications.
• Understanding of scalability, security, performance, and API design.
• Relational and NoSQL database design/optimization.
• Ability to balance people management with hands-on contribution across two squads.

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor, and manage engineering teams across both Core Systems and AI squads to ensure high performance and collaboration.
• Own backend and system architecture decisions across LAMP, MERN, and Python/RAG-based platforms.
• Remain actively involved in development, code reviews, and architectural planning (approximately 75% hands-on).
• Evaluate the quality of RAG pipeline design, retrieval strategy, embedding choices, and agentic workflows built by the AI squad.
• Drive end-to-end delivery of scalable, secure, and high-performing applications.
• Collaborate with product, design, and business stakeholders to deliver technical solutions.
• Establish best practices for coding standards, system design, security, and performance.
• Oversee database architecture and performance across relational and NoSQL systems.
• Identify technical risks and propose mitigation strategies, including AI-specific risks.
• Support hiring, onboarding, and technical growth of engineering team members.

Skills

LAMP stack

MERN stack

Python (Django/Flask/FastAPI)

API design

Database design (Relational & NoSQL)

Security practices

Hands-on leadership

Mentoring

Code reviews

Cloud/DevOps awareness

Tools

MySQL

MongoDB

Express/Node.js

React

Laravel

Django/Flask

Nginx/Apache

LangChain

Job description

The Engineering Manager will be responsible for leading, mentoring, and scaling engineering teams while maintaining strong hands-on involvement in system architecture and development. This role requires a senior technologist with proven leadership experience, capable of managing complex backend systems and driving high-quality software delivery across multiple technology stacks.

The engineering organization is split into two squads: a Core Systems squad (LAMP + MERN/MEAN engineers maintaining CRM, ERP, garage/operations management, and customer-facing platforms), and an AI squad (Python engineers building RAG pipelines, LLM integrations, and agentic applications). The Engineering Manager will own both squads and must be able to credibly evaluate and direct technical work in both — not delegate one squad's work without the ability to assess it.

The primary technical focus is the LAMP stack, with equally weighted, genuine hands-on responsibility for MERN and Python/RAG-based backend technologies. This is not a nice-to-have breadth requirement — candidates must show direct, built experience across the stacks they'll be managing, since no dedicated senior IC currently exists to independently validate AI squad technical decisions.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead, mentor, and manage engineering teams across both the Core Systems and AI squads to ensure high performance and collaboration
• Own backend and system architecture decisions across LAMP, MERN, and Python/RAG-based platforms
• Remain actively involved in development, code reviews, and architectural planning (approximately 75% hands-on)
• Personally evaluate the quality of RAG pipeline design, retrieval strategy, embedding choices, and agentic workflows built by the AI squad
• Drive end-to-end delivery of scalable, secure, and high-performing applications
• Collaborate with product, design, and business stakeholders to deliver technical solutions
• Establish best practices for coding standards, system design, security, and performance
• Oversee database architecture and performance across relational and NoSQL systems
• Identify technical risks and propose mitigation strategies, including AI-specific risks such as hallucination, retrieval failure, and guardrail gaps
• Support hiring, onboarding, and technical growth of engineering team members

Required Qualifications & Experience:

• 7+ years of professional software engineering experience with 2+ years in an engineering management or technical leadership role
• Strong hands-on expertise with the LAMP stack (PHP, Laravel or similar frameworks, MySQL, Linux, Apache/Nginx)
• Hands-on experience with MERN stack technologies (MongoDB, Express, React, Node.js)
• Demonstrated, hands-on experience building a RAG pipeline, LLM integration, or agentic application personally — not solely through coursework, tool usage, or managing/reviewing engineers who built it. Candidates should be able to speak specifically to their chunking strategy, embedding model choice, retrieval approach, and evaluation method for a real project they built.
• Experience with Python-based frameworks such as Django, Flask, or FastAPI
• Experience architecting and delivering at least 3 production-grade applications
• Strong understanding of scalability, security, performance optimization, and API design
• Experience with relational and NoSQL database design and optimization
• Ability to balance people management with hands-on technical contribution across two distinct technical squads

Preferred / Bonus Experience

• Experience with LangChain, LangSmith, or comparable agentic/LLM-orchestration frameworks
• Experience with vector databases (Pinecone, Weaviate, pgvector) and RAG evaluation methods (e.g., RAGAS, human eval, retrieval hit-rate)
• Experience in OMS, POS, marketplace, or supply chain platforms
• Experience leading cross-functional teams
• Exposure to cloud infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, and DevOps practices

This is a hybrid leadership role combining technical execution with people management. The Engineering Manager is expected to maintain strong ownership of technical outcomes while guiding team performance and delivery across both the Core Systems and AI squads.