Engineering Manager

Job description

# Engineering Manager > Portless · United States (Remote) · — · Posted 2026-06-16 **Workplace:** remote ## Description ### About Portless Portless is changing the face of global e-commerce. By decoupling brands from traditional, expensive domestic warehousing, we allow e-commerce companies to ship directly from manufacturing hubs to global consumers in as little as 3-5 days. We are growing fast, and we are looking for a data-driven, execution-focused Engineering Manager to run our day-to-day engineering operations and optimize our global delivery engine. ### The Role As the Engineering Manager, you will be the operational heartbeat of our engineering team. Reporting directly to the VP of Engineering (who owns technical vision, architecture, and macro-strategy), your sole focus will be execution, people management, and elite delivery metrics. You will directly manage and optimize a highly collaborative, globally distributed team of ~10 engineers spanning the USA, Canada, EU, UK, and China. This role is a balancing act: you will be responsible for keeping the long-term feature roadmap moving forward while simultaneously building the triage frameworks and incident response models needed to handle live logistics and supply chain systems. ### What You’ll Do - Drive Global Engineering Delivery: Take the technical roadmap defined by leadership, break it down, and execute across a fully distributed team. You own the sprint commitments, release cycles, and daily momentum across multiple time zones. - Balance Planned vs. Reactive Work: Establish clean frameworks to handle competing priorities. You will ensure the team maintains high feature velocity while cleanly carving out capacity for ad-hoc bug triage, prioritization, and resolution without blowing up the sprint. - Own Incident Management & On-Call: Define and run our real-time incident response processes. Because our logistics platform runs 24/7 across the globe, you will design sustainable, distributed on-call rotations and post-mortem cultures that drive down Time to Restore Service (MTTR). - Architect Asynchronous Workflows: Design, implement, and champion operational processes that minimize the need for real-time meetings. Ensure high-quality documentation, clear handoffs, and independent execution are core to how the team builds. - Own Delivery Metrics (DORA): Implement, track, and relentlessly optimize key delivery metrics. You will obsess over Deployment Frequency, Lead Time for Changes, Change Failure Rate, and Time to Restore Service to ensure a healthy, high-throughput pipeline. - Champion AI-Augmented Engineering: Standardize and optimize the team's usage of modern AI development tools (e.g., Cursor, Copilot, Claude Code). Drive development practices that balance rapid AI-assisted execution with rigorous code review, security guardrails, and codebase cleanliness. - Global People Management & Team Health: Actively manage, mentor, and coach a close-knit team of ~10 engineers. Conduct high-impact, flexible 1-on-1s, set clear performance expectations, and maintain a highly motivated, inclusive, and unified culture despite geographic distances. ### What We’re Looking For - The Global Startup Operator: 2+ years of experience directly managing a team of ~10 software engineers, with a proven track record of successfully running globally distributed, asynchronous teams. - AI Fluency: You are an active user of modern AI development tools yourself and have a clear philosophy on how to lead a team utilizing them. You understand exactly where AI accelerates engineering and, crucially, where it introduces risk, tech debt, or quality issues. You view AI as a powerful tool for amplifying engineering output, enabling your team to achieve significantly more while maintaining high standards of quality. You bring experience and expertise in using AI tools in day-to-day operations as well as building AI enabled tools for wider adoption. - Chaos Wrangler: Proven experience building triage systems for ad-hoc bugs and running real-time incident management for live, high-stakes production systems. You know how to categorize severity, shield developers from noise, and keep a cool head during production outages. - A Master of Async Communication: Exceptional written communication skills. You default to thorough documentation, clear ticketing, and public channels over ad-hoc calls, setting the gold standard for how a global team interacts. - Data-Driven Operator: You don't guess if a sprint went well; you use data. You have practical experience utilizing DORA metrics or similar frameworks to diagnose engineering bottlenecks and improve team velocity. - . - People-First Leader: You excel at the human side of management. You know how to cultivate psychological safety and prevent burnout—especially when managing distributed on-call rotations—while maintaining a high bar for accountability. - Technical Grounding: While you won't be setting the architecture or writing production code daily, you have a strong engineering background. You can confidently navigate code reviews, understand modern cloud workflows, and intelligently challenge estimates. - Low Ego, High Alignment: You thrive in a partnership where you own execution and delivery, collaborating seamlessly with the VP of Engineering who owns the technical vision and architecture. ### Bonus Points (Nice-to-Haves) - Domain Expertise: Prior engineering management experience in Supply Chain, Logistics, or E-commerce verticals. - Integration Familiarity: Experience working with major e-commerce platforms (e.g., Shopify, WooCommerce) or complex cross-border shipping, tracking, and customs APIs. You understand the pain points of real-world data synchronization and physical-world dependencies. ### Why Portless? - Competitive salary + meaningful equity package. - Flexible, remote-first, and asynchronous-friendly work environment across multiple time zones across the world. - The chance to run a highly impactful, 24-hour engineering engine at a company disrupting global logistics. ## Apply [Apply at Portless](https://apply.workable.com/portless/j/28AF333E30/apply) --- Powered by [Workable](https://www.workable.com)