Software Engineering Manager

Insight Global; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Insight Global is seeking an Engineering Manager for a client in Chicago to lead an on-site software engineering team responsible for clearing systems. You will own delivery across the full software lifecycle, mentor engineers, and guide architecture decisions in a high-trust, production-focused environment.

Minimum 10+ years in engineering with 3+ years managing engineers, plus a Bachelor's in CS or related field.

Qualifications

• Ten+ years in software engineering with leadership experience.
• 3+ years of direct people management of engineers.
• A proven track record delivering complex work on target dates.
• Strong architecture judgment and written design records.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow a team of software engineers, including performance management and hiring.
• Minimize cognitive load on team leads and engineers to focus on domain problems.
• Partner with QA/test engineering on shared delivery goals.
• Guide design decisions with domain knowledge of clearing and post-trade processing.
• Align roadmap with product management and delivery capacity.
• Shape team boundaries to realize intended architecture and Conway's law.
• Own architecture decision records and keep them current as designs evolve.
• Ensure code reviews and coding standards across teams.
• Improve deployment frequency, lead time, and time to restore service.
• Run on-call and production support for services.

Skills

Leadership

Hiring

Performance management

Architectural design

Domain knowledge

Education

Bachelor's in Computer Science

Tools

Java

Kubernetes

GitHub Actions

PostgreSQL

Kafka

Linux

Job description

*Role is 4 days a week on site in Chicago, IL*

The client is a regulated clearinghouse. We clear the event contracts and prediction markets listed on the client’s exchanges, and we are building toward tokenized collateral, 24x7 operation, and the infrastructure that carries traditional finance onto DeFi rails.

CCUS Software Engineering is a high trust environment. Failure leads to inquiry rather than blame. Working across team boundaries is expected rather than tolerated. We solve the problem, then we write the code. Design documents and architecture decision records come first. The engineers we value most close their feedback loop. They write tests, and they instrument what they ship so it fails fast, explains itself in production, leaves an audit trail and rolls back cleanly.

The Engineering Manager leads the software engineers who build our clearing systems. You would lead an existing team, help shape the larger one it becomes, and how the work is divided. The systems your teams own are what let client list and clear new products, so delivery dates here move business dates. We expect our managers to carry real domain knowledge in clearing and to stay close to system design.

Your responsibilities will be:

• Leading and growing a team of software engineers, including performance management and hiring.
• Minimizing cognitive load on your team leads and engineers so their attention stays on solving domain problems in code.
• Partnering with the quality engineering organization, which owns QA and test engineering, on shared delivery goals.
• Applying domain knowledge of clearing and post-trade processing to guide design decisions rather than delegating them.
• Aligning the roadmap with product management against real delivery capacity.
• Reducing friction between your engineers and the product, operations and partner teams they depend on.
• Shaping team boundaries and ownership so the organization produces the architecture we intend, applying Conway's law deliberately rather than inheriting its side effects.
• Owning the architecture decision records for your teams' services and keeping them current as designs change.
• Ensuring code review practices and coding standards are enforced consistently across teams.
• Improving deployment frequency, change lead time, change failure rate and time to restore service.
• Running the on-call and production support model for your teams' services.

Required:

• Owning delivery across the full software lifecycle, from design and code review standards through production support
• Experience managing software engineers, including direct performance management and hiring
• A record of making the people around you better, with specific engineers you can point to
• Delivering complex work on a date that mattered
• Partnering with product management on roadmap, scope and sequencing
• Working knowledge of clearing, post-trade processing or capital markets
• Architecture judgment and a written-first working style, with the depth to guide a design, challenge a proposal, and author the decision records behind both

Preferred:

• Experience establishing code review practices and coding standards across more than one team
• Shaping team boundaries to get the architecture you want rather than the one the org chart hands you
• Designing developer tooling and measuring delivery health with metrics such as change lead time and change failure rate
• A habit of hiring for range rather than for a single language, since Java is our stack choice but we hire polyglots

Nice to have:

• The FIX messaging protocol
• Cloud platforms including AWS, Azure or GCP
• JVM languages such as Clojure, Scala or Kotlin

Java on Kubernetes. Application code and CI pipelines live in GitHub with GitHub Actions. Container images and build artifacts live in registries such as Harbor and Artifactory, and Helm charts are deployed by ArgoCD from a GitOps repository. PostgreSQL, Kafka and Linux. This is representative rather than exhaustive.

You do not need experience with every technology in our environment. We hire for competencies over pedigree, so if you have built similar systems and learn quickly, we encourage you to apply.

Minimum Work Experience: 10+ years in engineering, with 3+ years managing engineers

Minimum Education: Bachelor's in Computer Science or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience