Senior Engineering Manager

Caraa; Palo Alto (CA); Hybrid; USD 240,000 - 320,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits

Hybrid schedule

Housing stipend

Mobile stipend

Internet stipend

Commuter benefits

Free lunch

Job summary

Nectar Social in Palo Alto is seeking a Senior Engineering Manager to lead one of our core engineering teams. You will own product strategy with a strong focus on customer outcomes, mentor engineers, and partner with Product and Design to drive roadmaps while maintaining high technical standards.

You’ll sit in customer calls, influence architecture decisions, and help scale engineering culture as we grow from 50 to the next growth phase.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering experience.
• 2+ years in a direct engineering management role leading high-performing software teams.
• Strong product instincts with emphasis on customer outcomes over shipped tickets.
• Proven collaboration with Product Managers and Designers in fast-paced startups.
• Bias toward action in high-growth, ambiguous environments.
• Excellent written and verbal communication with cross-functional trust.
• Experience managing AI-powered or agentic product experiences (bonus).

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow a team of engineers across levels.
• Partner with Product and Design to define team roadmaps.
• Sit in customer calls to build intuition for user needs and product fit.
• Own planning, execution, and delivery for your domain, balancing speed and scalability.
• Provide hands-on technical guidance when needed and contribute to design discussions.
• Establish and scale engineering processes including sprint planning and post-mortems.
• Help scale the org by hiring and shaping engineering culture.

Skills

People Leadership

Product Partnership

Customer Empathy

Execution & Delivery

Hands-On Tech Leadership

Operational Excellence

Hiring & Org Building

Tools

React

TypeScript

AWS

Pulumi

PostgreSQL

ClickHouse

Turbopuffer

Job description

About Us

We're living through a fundamental shift in how people discover, evaluate, and purchase products. The next generation doesn't respond to traditional marketing -- they build relationships with brands through authentic social interactions, seek recommendations from communities they trust, and expect personalized experiences that feel human, not corporate.

At Nectar Social, we're building the AI-native social operating system that enables this new era of commerce. We believe every social interaction should deepen the relationship between brands and their communities while creating genuine value for both sides.

Founded by ex-Meta product and engineering leaders, we've raised over $30M in total capital from investors including GV and True Ventures. We work with brands like Oura Health, Caraway, e.l.f. Cosmetics, Kosas, OLIPOP, and many more. We're building the future of social commerce -- where community, conversation, and commerce converge.

The Role

We are looking for a Senior Engineering Manager who thinks like a product leader to own and scale one of our core engineering teams. Our engineering organization includes multiple core teams with a strong product-facing focus, as well as a Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) team that moves fast across the full stack on high-priority initiatives. Your team will build products that ingest large volumes of social data, run AI agents on that data in real time, and deliver insights to customers through analytics and automation.

This is a senior-level leadership role that goes beyond pure people management. You will be deeply involved in what gets built, not just how. You’ll sit in customer calls, develop strong opinions about product strategy, and partner with Product and Design as a true peer. At the same time, you’ll mentor and grow senior technical talent, drive systemic technical quality, and help shape overall engineering culture as we scale from ~50 people into our next phase of growth.

What You'll Be Doing

• People Leadership & Growth: Manage, coach, and grow a team of software engineers, ranging from mid-level to staff level. Provide actionable feedback, drive career progression, and foster a high-performance culture.

• Product Partnership & Strategy: Partner closely with Product and Design to define team roadmaps. Bring your own perspective on user problems, scope, and sequencing to influence strategic direction.

• Customer Empathy: Sit in customer calls regularly to build direct intuition for how social and brand teams work and where our product falls short.

• Execution & Delivery: Own planning, execution, and predictable delivery for your product domain, balancing speed, system scalability, and business impact.

• Hands-On Technical Leadership: This role is more hands-on than a typical EM at this level. You're not on the critical path for feature delivery, but you stay close enough to the systems to dig in when it matters — pulling up a PR when a design decision needs a second opinion, getting into the code during a tricky production issue, and building tools and processes that improve how your engineers work day to day.

• Operational Excellence: Establish, refine, and scale engineering processes, including sprint planning, system design reviews, on-call rotations, incident response, and post-mortems.

• Hiring & Org Building: Play a critical role in scaling the engineering organization by sourcing, interviewing, and closing top-tier engineering talent.

What We're Looking For

• Experience Level: 8+ years of total experience in software engineering, with at least 2+ years in a direct engineering management role leading high-performing software teams.

• Product Instincts: Strong product acumen with a track record of forming opinions on product direction, pushing back on unclear specifications, and measuring success by customer outcomes rather than shipped tickets.

• Technical Depth: You can still read unfamiliar code and reason your way through it. We're not looking for someone shipping features, but for someone who digs into details rather than delegating around them — comfortable enough in the system to give feedback that changes an engineer's design, not just approve it.

• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Proven experience working as a peer to Product Managers and Product Designers, particularly in fast-paced startup environments where roles cross over seamlessly.

• Startup Agility: A strong bias toward action and comfort operating in high-growth, ambiguous environments with changing priorities.

• Communication: Exceptional, direct written and verbal communication skills with a history of building cross-functional trust.

• AI Literacy: Active interest and experience in how AI is transforming product capabilities and modern software engineering workflows.

Bonus Points

• Domain Expertise: 5+ years of domain experience in B2B SaaS, social data platforms, commerce, or marketing technology.

• Product Engineering Culture: Prior leadership experience in environments where Engineering Managers were expected to act as co-product leaders.

• Tech Stack Familiarity: Hands-on experience or familiarity with React, TypeScript, AWS, Pulumi, Postgres, ClickHouse, and Turbopuffer.

• Mobile Experience: Teams you've led have shipped mobile products, ideally in React Native.

• Scale-Up Track Record: Prior experience helping scale an engineering org through critical growth stages (e.g., growing from 20 to 100+ engineers).

• AI-Powered Systems: Experience managing engineering teams building, deploying, or operating AI-powered or agentic product experiences.

What We Offer

• Competitive compensation and early equity

• Health, vision, and dental benefits + 401(k) match

• Hybrid work schedule (4 days in office) with 3 flex remote days per quarter (available after 3 months)

• Comprehensive stipends: $1,000/month housing stipend for living near the office, $50/month mobile stipend, $50/month internet stipend for remote employees, and commuter benefits (train stipend or Palo Alto parking permit reimbursement)

• Free lunch in the heart of University Ave. in Palo Alto