Engineering Manager, Tax Compliance

Justworks; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 212,000 - 274,000; Full time

Job summary

Justworks is seeking an Engineering Manager for Workforce Payments in New York City. You will lead a team of engineers, driving payroll, money movement, and tax calculation features while balancing hands-on coding with mentorship.

You will partner with Product and other teams to shape roadmaps, ensure reliability, and deliver scalable solutions for customers. This role emphasizes leadership, collaboration, and technical excellence.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience as a software engineer working on production web applications.
• Minimum of 1 year of experience managing a team of engineers
• Demonstrable experience prioritizing, crafting, and achieving plans
• Strong communication skills with ability to grasp and explain complex concepts to both technical and non-technical people
• High levels of empathy and interpersonal skills
• Solid understanding of core web development technologies. i.e. Data structures, data stores, algorithms, distributed systems and common patterns around these frameworks

Responsibilities

• Lead a software engineering team as a player-coach to deliver features for customers.
• Set priorities, coordinate projects, and mentor engineers to grow skills.
• Partner with Product to define long-term strategy and quarterly roadmap.
• Communicate and coordinate with other teams to understand requirements and opportunities for improvement.
• Drive sound technical decisions and foster a culture of excellence and learning.

Skills

Software engineering

Cross-functional collaboration

Mentoring

Empathy

Communication

Prioritization

Tools

Golang

Ruby on Rails

Javascript

MySQL

Kafka

AWS

Git

Memcache

Redis

ElasticSearch

Docker

Terraform

Kubernetes

CircleCI

DataDog

Job description

Who We Are

At Justworks, you’ll enjoy a welcoming and casual environment, great benefits, wellness program offerings, company retreats, and the ability to interact with and learn from leaders in the startup community. We work hard and care about our most prized asset - our people.

We’re helping businesses get off the ground by enabling them to focus on running their business. We solve HR issues. We’re data-driven and never stop iterating. If you’d like to work in a supportive, entrepreneurial environment, are interested in building something meaningful and having fun while doing it, we’d love to hear from you.

We're united by shared goals and shared motivations at Justworks. These are best summed up in our company values, which are reflected in our product and in our team.

Our Values

If this sounds like you, you’ll fit right in.

Who You Are

Not only do you have the broad, extensive knowledge of core software development technologies, but you also have a high level of empathy and the interpersonal skills to work cross-functionally in an organization. You can grasp and communicate complex concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences. Being able to see the bigger picture, you bring people together to effectively prioritize, craft, and achieve plans.

As an Engineering Manager at Justworks, you will help build and oversee a team of software engineers as a player-coach. You are responsible for coordinating projects, setting priorities, and motivating engineers to create and maintain features for our customers. The role involves a mix of hands‑on coding and a strong technical background, with a passion for mentoring and growing teams.

What You Will Work On

As Engineering Manager for Workforce Payments, you will lead the team that builds the core computation layer powering Justworks’ payroll, money movement, and tax calculation products, ensuring our customers can confidently and accurately pay their workforce.

This team is mission‑critical, operating at the heart of our platform’s financial accuracy and compliance. You will lead technical decision‑making and be expected to take initiative in identifying projects that will enable us to meet key business goals, such as scaling our tax and money movement capabilities, improving the integrity of our financial ledger, and developing robust platform interfaces for payroll data. We’re looking for people who have a passion for solving real‑world, complex financial problems and will thrive building a growing team focused on reliability and precision.

• Work with the Engineers, Design, and Product Managers to prioritize, schedule and execute projects so we can quickly develop and ship new features
• Partner with Product to define and execute the team’s long‑term strategy and quarterly roadmap, including setting goals and measuring progress/success towards them
• Communicate and coordinate with other teams (inside and outside of engineering) to understand the requirements and opportunities for improvement
• Mentor engineers to help them grow their technical skills by fostering a culture of technical excellence, innovation and continuous learning
• Provide guidance, both technical and non-technical, to direct reports
• Attract, hire, develop, and retain a high‑performing team of engineers
• Help drive sound technical decision‑making and lead technical conversations with other teams across Justworks
• Instill a sense of empathy in the team for our internal stakeholders to create better user experiences with an eye towards making workflows easier and more efficient
• Performs other related duties as assigned

How You Will Do Your Work

As an Engineering Manager, how results are achieved is paramount for your success and ultimately result in our success as an organization. In this role, your foundational knowledge, skills, abilities and personal attributes are anchored in the following competencies:

Good judgment - the exercise of critical thinking, analyzing and assessing problems and implications, identifying patterns, making connections of underlying issues, understanding risks and developing mitigation strategies, and taking ownership of the outcome.

Resourcefulness - taking a can‑do approach, even in the face of obstacles and constraints by assessing what’s in front of you and effectively and efficiently optimizing what you have, whether it's working on something new or thinking about how to do something better.

Teamwork and communication - putting our collective best together through documentation, collaboration, relationship‑building, listening, empathy, recruiting, and evangelism. Influence and leadership - fostering a community of knowledge‑sharing, collaboration, mentorship, and forward‑thinking.

Skills and knowledge - the capacity to actively learn and apply specific domain knowledge, know‑how, and best practices to continually enhance and improve.

In addition, all Justworkers focus on aligning their behaviors to our core values known as COGIS. It stands for:

• Camaraderie - Day to day you can be seen working together toward a higher purpose. You like to have fun. You’re an active listener, treat people respectfully, and have a strong desire to know and help others.
• Openness - Your default is to be open. You're willing to share information, understand other perspectives, and consider new possibilities. You’re curious, ask open questions, and are receptive to thoughts and feedback from others.
• Grit - You demonstrate grit by having the courage to commit and persevere. You’re committed, earnest, and dive in to get the job done well with a positive attitude.
• Integrity - Simply put, do what you say and say what you’ll do. You’re honest and forthright, have a strong moral compass, and strive to match your words with your actions while leading by example.
• Simplicity - Be like Einstein: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.”

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience as a software engineer working on production web applications
• Minimum of 1 year of experience managing a team of engineers
• Demonstrable experience prioritizing, crafting, and achieving plans
• Strong communication skills with ability to grasp and explain complex concepts to both technical and non-technical people
• High levels of empathy and interpersonal skills
• Solid understanding of core web development technologies. i.e. Data structures, data stores, algorithms, distributed systems and common patterns around these frameworks

Technologies Used

• Golang, Ruby on Rails, Javascript, MySQL, Kafka, AWS, Git, Memcache, Redis, ElasticSearch, Docker, Terraform, Kubernetes, CircleCI, DataDog

The base wage range for this position based in our New York City Office is targeted at $212,000.00 to $274,000.00 per year.

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#LI-Hybrid

Actual compensation is based on multiple factors that are unique to each candidate, including and not limited to skill set, level of relevant experience, and specific work location. Salary ranges for positions based in other locations may differ based on the cost of labor in that location.

For more information about Justworks’ Total Reward Philosophy, including all of the perks and benefits we are proud to offer our team members, please visit Total Rewards @ Justworks.

Diversity At Justworks

Justworks is committed to maintaining a workplace where diversity of identity, culture, and life experience is the norm and is celebrated authentically and respected consistently. Diversity in our work, our people, and our product drives creativity and innovation, entrepreneurial leadership and integrity, competitiveness, and collaboration throughout our business and in the market. We depend on our differences to make our team stronger, our workplace more dynamic, and our product accessible to all of our customers.

We’re proud to be an equal opportunity employer open to all qualified applicants regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital or familial status, disability, pregnancy, gender identity or expression, veteran status, genetic information, or any other legally protected status. Justworks is fully dedicated to providing necessary support to candidates with disabilities who may require reasonable accommodations. We also provide reasonable accommodations to employees based on their sincerely held religious beliefs, as well as for other covered reasons consistent with applicable federal, state, and local laws. If you're in need of a reasonable accommodation, please reach out to us at [e-mail]. Your comfort and success matter to us, and we're here to ensure an inclusive experience.

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