AI-First Engineering Manager - Lead, Deliver, Scale

Portland Seed Fund; United States; Remote; USD 185,000 - 215,000; Full time

Job summary

Customer.io is seeking an Engineering Manager to lead high-performing teams delivering customer-focused value. You will own end-to-end projects, set milestones, and ensure scalable architectures while driving AI-native development practices.

You will mentor engineers, hire top talent, and coordinate across departments to align with customer success. Ideal candidates bring 3+ years of SaaS leadership, a track record of delivering with milestones, strong technical chops, and a bias for action in

Qualifications

• 3+ years managing engineers at a SaaS company (B2B or B2C), ideally early-to-mid-stage.
• A track record of driving execution- concrete delivery outcomes with milestones, dates, and 'I drove' ownership.
• A strong technical background—you can hold your own in architecture conversations and design reviews.
• Comfort operating with high autonomy and little prescribed structure—you create your own clarity.
• Demonstrated AI-native leadership—not just personal fluency, but bringing AI-first practices into how your team builds.
• Experience building high-performing, inclusive, and collaborative teams.
• Clear, concise, and direct communication, both verbal and written.

Responsibilities

• Care deeply about our customers and their outcomes.
• Lead your squad to deliver real customer value by owning projects end to end—from planning through delivery, quality, and follow-through.
• Drive execution: set milestones, keep work moving through ambiguity and competing priorities, and ship in small, observable increments.
• Make confident decisions when the path isn't obvious, and lead your team through them.
• Set the operating rhythm that helps your team move fastest, rather than defaulting to ceremony for its own sake.
• Ensure your squad's solutions are scalable, architecturally sound, flexible, and secure, with strong peer-review, QA, documentation, deployment, logging, and monitoring practices.
• Stay close to the work- jump into design reviews, architecture calls, and incidents rather than watching from a distance.
• Provide direct, timely, and specific coaching, and create meaningful development opportunities for your direct reports.
• Hire, onboard, and manage performance so the right people are in place to hit your squad's goals.
• Bring an AI-native perspective- use AI tools to accelerate the team's velocity and help everyone prototype faster and ship smarter.
• Partner across engineering and other departments to align efforts with customer success, and reach higher when our customers are having a bad day.

Job description

Customer.io is seeking an Engineering Manager to lead high-performing teams delivering customer-focused value. You will own end-to-end projects, set milestones, and ensure scalable architectures while driving AI-native development practices.

You will mentor engineers, hire top talent, and coordinate across departments to align with customer success. Ideal candidates bring 3+ years of SaaS leadership, a track record of delivering with milestones, strong technical chops, and a bias for action in