Activation Engineering Manager — Hands-On Leader

Linktree Pty; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 220,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Wellbeing allowance

Medical, dental, vision insurance

Retirement contributions

Stock option program

Flexible time off

Job summary

Linktree is seeking an hands-on Engineering Manager to lead Activation, a squad focused on getting users started and engaged with our growth platform. As a player-coach, you’ll blend people leadership with hands-on coding, shaping architecture, prototyping, code reviews, and fast delivery while partnering with Product, Design, and Data to drive measurable activation and retention outcomes.

You’ll work in a global, flexible environment offering remote or hybrid options and a comprehensive

Qualifications

• Experienced in modern software development and architecture.
• Proven track record leading engineers and shipping user-facing products.
• Player-coach who stays close to code and technical execution.
• Comfortable with experimentation, analytics, and user insights to drive impact.
• Bias toward action and ability to prioritize tradeoffs while maintaining quality.

Responsibilities

• Lead and mentor a high-performing engineering squad focused on activation and early user experiences.
• Stay hands-on technically, contribute code, prototype solutions, and unblock delivery.
• Partner with Product, Design, and Data to identify opportunities and translate ideas into scalable experiences.
• Connect engineering work to measurable outcomes using data and experiments.
• Drive technical excellence through architecture, reviews, testing, and reliability.
• Set clear outcomes and prioritize effectively to ship high-impact work fast.
• Build for experimentation and iteration to learn from user behavior and scale successful ideas.
• Embed AI tooling and workflows to boost developer productivity.
• Champion reliability with healthy on-call practices and continuous improvement.

Skills

Hands-on

Leadership

Experimentation

AI-forward

Cross-functional

Tools

TypeScript

React

GraphQL

AWS

PHP

Job description

Linktree is seeking an hands-on Engineering Manager to lead Activation, a squad focused on getting users started and engaged with our growth platform. As a player-coach, you’ll blend people leadership with hands-on coding, shaping architecture, prototyping, code reviews, and fast delivery while partnering with Product, Design, and Data to drive measurable activation and retention outcomes.

You’ll work in a global, flexible environment offering remote or hybrid options and a comprehensive