Engineering Manager, Play Expansion

Fetch; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 168,000 - 198,000; Full time

Job summary

Fetch is expanding Play across surfaces to improve discovery and engagement for tens of millions of users. As Engineering Manager, Play Expansion, you will lead a team building backend and mobile components and influence technical tradeoffs to deliver measurable outcomes.

You will partner with Product, Design, Data, and other teams, ensuring scalable, reliable systems and healthy development velocity. Remote-friendly, US-based candidates encouraged to apply.

Qualifications

• Experience leading software engineers as an Engineering Manager or technical lead, with readiness to own people management for a small team.
• 8+ years of experience in software engineering, technical leadership, or closely related work
• Strong technical background in backend systems and/or native mobile applications, with the ability to guide engineers across both
• Ability to stay close to technical execution through design reviews, code reviews, architectural discussions, and tradeoff analysis
• Experience delivering high-quality, customer-facing consumer products at meaningful scale
• Ability to translate product and business goals into clear technical plans, team priorities, and measurable outcomes
• Sound technical judgment for balancing delivery speed, scalability, reliability, maintainability, and operational health
• Experience collaborating across engineering teams and navigating dependencies in a cross-functional product environment
• Strong communication skills, including the ability to navigate differing viewpoints and advocate for realistic scope and technical constraints
• Commitment to engineering best practices including testing, observability, incident response, and active management of technical debt
• Ability to work effectively with remote teammates across US time zones

Responsibilities

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of software engineers across multiple experience levels
• Set clear expectations, provide regular feedback, and support career growth and performance management
• Own delivery for the Play Expansion roadmap, ensuring predictable execution and high-quality outcomes
• Translate product and business goals into clear technical plans and milestones
• Help the team prioritize, sequence, and unblock multiple workstreams while clarifying tradeoffs around scope, quality, and timing
• Partner with senior and staff engineers to guide system design, architecture, code quality, and technical decision-making within the team
• Collaborate with Product, Design, Data, Support, and engineering teams across Play and other Fetch pillars to align dependencies and deliver cohesive user experiences
• Ensure systems are scalable, reliable, observable, and resilient under high traffic and transaction volume
• Balance delivery velocity with long-term technical health and operational excellence
• Improve team processes, reduce operational overhead, and drive continuous improvement
• Communicate progress, risks, and tradeoffs clearly to stakeholders and leadership
• Foster a culture of ownership, quality, and accountability
• Support engineers in using AI-assisted tools such as GitHub Copilot or Claude Code to improve development velocity, documentation, and code quality

Skills

People leadership

Software engineering

Backend systems

Mobile development

Communication

Remote collaboration

Tools

GitHub Copilot

Claude Code

Job description

Meet Fetch Engineering

At Fetch, engineering is driven by curiosity, ownership, and a bias toward action. We operate in complex problem spaces where the right answer is not always clear, and success depends on adaptability, critical thinking, and informed decision-making. Our engineers are comfortable navigating ambiguity, understanding tradeoffs, gathering context, and turning uncertainty into progress while maintaining high technical standards.

Engineers at Fetch take pride in building reliable, scalable systems that serve millions of users. You will contribute directly to the codebase, collaborate closely with cross-functional partners, and help shape best practices that elevate the quality of our work. We foster a culture of mentorship and collaboration, where engineers grow by learning from one another and holding a high bar for quality, reliability, and impact.

About the Role:

Fetch is scaling the systems and experiences that help tens of millions of users discover new ways to engage, earn, and return. We are hiring an Engineering Manager, Play Expansion to lead the team responsible for extending Play beyond the Play hub and making games and rewarding gameplay more discoverable throughout Fetch.

The Play Expansion team builds the capabilities that bring Play into the surfaces and journeys where users already engage, including Discover, Nexus, and the broader Fetch information architecture. The team standardizes how Play games, milestones, and rewards are merchandised and awarded across the app, connecting with common patterns such as offerization today and Earning Opportunities in the future.

As an Engineering Manager on Play Expansion, you will lead a team of engineers building backend and mobile components and capabilities that support ranking and placing Play content, including games and milestones, across multiple app surfaces, for improved discoverability and outcomes. You will partner with engineers and peer teams across Play and other Fetch pillars to translate defined product requirements into clear team plans, unblock execution, and make pragmatic technical tradeoffs. This role is accountable for the measurable outcomes, health, and technical quality of the single team, and requires enough hands-on technical depth to guide design discussions, review tradeoffs, and help the team build sustainably.

This is a full-time role that can be held from one of our US offices or remotely in the United States.

What you’ll do at Fetch (Role Responsibilities):

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of software engineers across multiple experience levels
• Set clear expectations, provide regular feedback, and support career growth and performance management
• Own delivery for the Play Expansion roadmap, ensuring predictable execution and high-quality outcomes
• Translate product and business goals into clear technical plans and milestones
• Help the team prioritize, sequence, and unblock multiple workstreams while clarifying tradeoffs around scope, quality, and timing
• Partner with senior and staff engineers to guide system design, architecture, code quality, and technical decision-making within the team
• Collaborate with Product, Design, Data, Support, and engineering teams across Play and other Fetch pillars to align dependencies and deliver cohesive user experiences
• Ensure systems are scalable, reliable, observable, and resilient under high traffic and transaction volume
• Balance delivery velocity with long-term technical health and operational excellence
• Improve team processes, reduce operational overhead, and drive continuous improvement
• Communicate progress, risks, and tradeoffs clearly to stakeholders and leadership
• Foster a culture of ownership, quality, and accountability
• Support engineers in using AI-assisted tools such as GitHub Copilot or Claude Code to improve development velocity, documentation, and code quality

In your Toolbox (Minimum Requirements):

• Experience leading software engineers as an Engineering Manager or technical lead, with readiness to own people management for a small team
• 8+ years of experience in software engineering, technical leadership, or closely related work
• Strong technical background in backend systems and/or native mobile applications, with the ability to guide engineers across both
• Ability to stay close to technical execution through design reviews, code reviews, architectural discussions, and tradeoff analysis
• Experience delivering high-quality, customer-facing consumer products at meaningful scale
• Ability to translate product and business goals into clear technical plans, team priorities, and measurable outcomes
• Sound technical judgment for balancing delivery speed, scalability, reliability, maintainability, and operational health
• Experience collaborating across engineering teams and navigating dependencies in a cross-functional product environment
• Strong communication skills, including the ability to navigate differing viewpoints and advocate for realistic scope and technical constraints
• Commitment to engineering best practices including testing, observability, incident response, and active management of technical debt
• Ability to work effectively with remote teammates across US time zones

Compensation:

At Fetch, we offer competitive compensation packages including base, equity, and benefits to the exceptional folks we hire. The base salary range for this position is $167,875 - $197,500. Discover our benefits and how our employees live rewarded at https://fetch.com/careers