Engineering Manager (Hands on)

About

A fast-growing European SaaS company is looking for an Engineering Manager who codes first and manages second. You'll be joining a high-performing team of 5 engineers building an AI-powered compliance platform that's disrupting a massive, broken market across Europe.

You will work in partnership with the CTO, taking over the EM responsibilities - not as an executive, but as the strongest IC on the team who also happens to lead it.

First 90 days:

• Month 1: ship a meaningful feature (70–80% coding).
• Month 2: own engineering hiring.
• Month 3: lead performance conversations and 1:1s.

What makes this role genuinely exciting

• Direct line to the CTO — you'll shape engineering culture, hiring, and technical standards from near-scratch
• Engineers average under 2 hours of meetings per week. Focus is protected, not aspirational
• No standups, no sprints, no scrum. Small temporary teams form around problems, ship, and dissolve
• AI is already embedded in the engineering workflow — Cursor, Claude Code, Figma-to-code pipelines, automated architecture checks. Not for show
• You'll own system design on the company's biggest projects end-to-end, including a new agentic AI product (CISO AI) with real traction
• The business works: Series A, near cash-positive, strong customer growth. This isn't a moonshot
• Annual team retreats — Costa Brava, Austrian Alps, Portugal, Italy

You're the right person if

• 8+ years backend engineering, principal level or equivalent — you earned management, you didn't escape into it
• 1–3 years EM experience: 1:1s, performance conversations, hiring, ideally at a similar stage startup
• Hands-on with AI-assisted dev tools (Cursor, Claude Code) in real production work, with opinions on what actually moves the needle
• Strong Backend/ OOP background; comfortable across backend and infra
• You think people-first, not process-first — you reach for the right engineer, not the right runbook
• Based in EMEA, working CET/CEST timezone

Probably not for you if

• You haven't been in a codebase seriously in the last couple of years
• You default to process and templates when things break
• You believe growing from 5 to 10 engineers inevitably means sprints, ceremonies, and coordination overhead

Offer

• Competitive salary benchmarked to European market rates + generous equity
• €1,000/year development budget
• Full remote setup support + co-working access
• 26 days holiday + public holidays + comprehensive health insurance
• Latest MacBook + peripherals