Hands-on Engineering Manager (Player-Coach)

Matcha; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 130,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

NetBox Labs is seeking a hands-on Engineering Manager to lead a squad building our core software—NetBox, Add-ons, SDKs and Plugins, and our observability suite. You’ll review designs, contribute code when needed, and model best practices to unblock the team.

Partner with product managers to translate problems into shippable work, champion secure development, coach engineers, and foster ownership and knowledge sharing.

Qualifications

• 2+ years of experience as an Engineering Manager or Team Lead, ideally in a player-coach capacity where you're still writing code or reviewing PRs regularly.
• A track record of driving projects to completion on tight timelines, with a strong bias toward action and unblocking your team over process for its own sake.
• Strong technical background sufficient to review designs and code, and earn credibility with senior engineers.
• Experience with Agile methodologies, DevOps, and CI/CD in a fast-moving environment.
• Proficiency with GitHub for code management, project tracking, and collaboration.
• Solid understanding of software security principles and practices.
• Experience with open-source software development and community engagement is a plus.
• Excellent, direct communication skills - comfortable giving and receiving fast feedback in a remote, async-first environment.
• Proven ability to coach engineers and help them grow, while still being the person who rolls up their sleeves when the team needs it.

Responsibilities

• Lead a squad of engineers day-to-day while staying hands-on: reviewing code, jumping into design discussions, and occasionally shipping code yourself to unblock the team or model best practices.
• Drive execution relentlessly - break down ambiguous problems into clear plans, set sprint goals, remove blockers fast, and hold the team accountable to deadlines.
• Own the software development lifecycle for your team's projects, from planning and design through implementation, testing, and release.
• Run effective sprint planning, stand-ups, and retros using GitHub and internal tools, helping engineers break work into well-scoped, executable pieces.
• Champion modern, secure software development practices and keep quality bars high without slowing the team down.
• Partner closely with product managers to translate customer and community problems into shippable plans, pushing back with data when scope or timelines don't add up.
• Coach and mentor engineers individually - give direct, timely feedback, help them grow technically, and build a strong bench for future hiring.
• Foster a culture of ownership, continuous improvement, and knowledge sharing within the team.
• Act as a liaison between your team and the broader tech community, supporting open-source contributors and guiding community-facing initiatives where relevant.
• Report progress transparently to engineering leadership, flagging risks early rather than after they've become problems.
• Stay close enough to the code and the architecture to make credible calls on technical trade-offs, while trusting your engineers to own the details of implementation.

Skills

Engineering management

Hands-on coding

Agile methodologies

DevOps

CI/CD

GitHub

Security

Open-source

Communication

Mentoring

Tools

Python

Django

Go

gRPC

OpenTelemetry

Docker

Kubernetes

AWS

Azure

Job description

NetBox Labs is seeking a hands-on Engineering Manager to lead a squad building our core software—NetBox, Add-ons, SDKs and Plugins, and our observability suite. You’ll review designs, contribute code when needed, and model best practices to unblock the team.

Partner with product managers to translate problems into shippable work, champion secure development, coach engineers, and foster ownership and knowledge sharing.