Engineering Manager

Howrecruit; United States; On-site; USD 190,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Unlimited PTO

Product budget

Remote work (US)

Job summary

Howrecruit is seeking a Backend Engineering Manager to lead the core services powering our marketplace, including matching, scheduling, payments, communications, and infrastructure. This remote role (US only) blends hands-on engineering with people leadership, guiding 4-5 backend engineers and shaping technical direction alongside the VP of Engineering.

You will design scalable systems in Python/Django, mentor engineers, and partner with product and operations to raise quality, security, and

Qualifications

• Proven backend leadership with 2+ engineers managed.
• Strong design of scalable Python/Django backends.
• Experience with payments or financial systems a plus.
• Relational DB expertise beyond ORM.
• Ability to ship and lead with minimal process overhead.

Responsibilities

• Design and evolve scalable backend systems in Python/Django.
• Improve quality, security and reliability across pillars.
• Own live migrations and phased releases for sensitive work.
• Maintain backend infra, pipelines, and on-call readiness.
• Collaborate with product managers, designers, and engineers.
• Grow the backend team and enable engineers to ship fast.

Skills

Backend leadership

People management

System design

Payments systems experience

Python/Django

PostgreSQL

CI/CD & Docker

Remote collaboration

Tools

Python

Django

PostgreSQL

GitHub Actions

Docker

Job description

£190k - $260k Bonus + Equity + Unlimited PTO + Product Budget

Remote (US only)

As a Backend Engineering Manager, you'll join a fast-growing bootstrapped startup that's already profitable and lead the team that owns the core services powering the marketplace: matching, scheduling, payments, communications, compliance, and the infrastructure underneath all of it.

This is a genuine 60/40 role. The majority of your time goes on designing systems and shipping meaningful backend work, and the rest on growing a team of 4-5 backend engineers, developing individuals, and putting in just enough process that people can build rather than sit in meetings about building. You'll report to the VP of Engineering.

The culture is the reason people stay. This is a small team of entirely senior contributors, principal and staff level engineers who have deliberately chosen to remain very close to the work and build something every day rather than drift into pure oversight. There is very little process overhead, a genuinely high bar, and a real allergy to enterprise ritual. Autonomy is the default and the standards are set by the people around you, not by a framework.

A Django monolith powers thousands of in-person jobs a day across the backend pillars. The architecture is solid. The challenge is that growth is outpacing the quality, security, and reliability bar, and someone needs to raise it across every pillar. You'll shape both the technical direction and the team culture of a critical function.

Worth saying plainly: they score candidates on two separate axes, hands-on engineering and management, and you need to clear the bar on both. A brilliant engineer who treats management as overhead doesn't get hired here, and neither does a leader who has drifted too far from the systems. The role flexes from Manager to Director depending on the seniority of the person.

Responsibilities

• Design and evolve scalable backend systems using Python, Django, and associated frameworks.
• Drive quality, security, and reliability improvements across the backend pillars, with measurable movement on each pillar's core metrics.
• Own live migrations end-to-end, phasing sensitive work (particularly in payments and financial systems) so it lands safely and in small increments.
• Support the reliability, security, and performance of the backend infrastructure, including deployment pipelines and on-call.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with product managers, designers, and other engineers to deliver impactful solutions.
• Enable product engineers to work quickly, safely, and in an environment that is genuinely fun to be part of.

Management (40%)

• Mentor and grow a team of 4-5 backend engineers, with a development plan for each of them.
• Run regular 1:1s, give meaningful feedback, and support each person's career.
• Establish lightweight processes for planning, estimation, and delivery that keep engineers focused on building rather than on overhead.
• Partner with engineering leadership and product to set technical direction and priorities for the backend team.
• Build an active hiring pipeline and own sourcing, evaluating, closing, and onboarding.
• Partner with operations, care, and finance stakeholders (including the COO) on systems driven by operational rather than user-facing needs.
• Continuously improve how the team works by identifying and removing bottlenecks in tooling, workflow, and delivery.

Required Skills

• Strong backend engineering experience on medium to large scale production systems
• Direct management experience with 2+ engineers while still personally owning meaningful backend work. A tech lead without reports won't clear the bar.
• Relational database depth: indexing, query performance, and scaling patterns, not just the ORM. PostgreSQL preferred, MySQL fine.
• Real experience phasing live migrations on production systems. Payments or financial systems migration experience is the strongest signal here.
• On-call experience, with outages you've actually run and can talk through.
• Comfort in existing codebases and cleanup-focused work, not just greenfield.
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and containerisation (GitHub Actions, Docker or similar), and a view on how the deployment lifecycle makes migration work safer.
• A habit of partnering with data and analytics teams, using experiment results and metrics to decide what to ship, hold, or roll back.
• Experience building backend systems or internal tooling that serve operations teams, and the communication to earn trust with non-engineering leaders who have strong opinions.
• Based in the US, in a market the company operates in, so you can be a real user of the product. This one is a hard blocker.
• A hands-on engineering leader who chose management as a craft rather than a promotion, and refused the usual trade where the technical work quietly disappears as the team grows.
• Someone who can describe a specific time they prioritised a team member's growth over their own delivery, and a time they went the other way, and why.
• A self-starter comfortable setting direction for yourself and your team with very little oversight.
• Someone who has introduced lightweight process that stuck, and can also point to process they removed.
• The kind of engineer who sees internal tools and operational systems as first-class work, not something beneath the product roadmap.
• Someone who wants to sit alongside principal and staff level engineers who are still deep in the systems every day, and be held to that standard.
• Motivated by craft, ownership, and measurable impact on a profitable business, rather than headcount or title.

The Package

• Competitive salary and equity in a bootstrapped, profitable business.
• Unlimited PTO, and a culture where people are genuinely expected to take it.
• A product budget so you're a real user of what you're building.
• Flexible working, with the trust that comes from a fully remote senior team.

If you're looking to lead a team of world-class engineers who are still building every day, then this is the one for you