Manager, Technical Engineering

Job description

ActiveCampaign is seeking a **Manager, Technical Engineering** in Heredia, Costa Rica to lead a specialized team of Technical Reps and Technical Specialists within T2 Specialty. In this role, you won't just coordinate ticket queues—you will combine hands-on technical work with people leadership, carrying real technical authority in cross-functional partnerships. You will read code, debug alongside core Engineering teams, write scripts, evaluate technical designs, contribute to root-cause analysis at the system level, and personally prototype AI-assisted tooling while owning team performance and development. If you are passionate about mentoring technical talent, stepping into the code, and driving operational excellence, this is your opportunity to make a lasting impact at ActiveCampaign. ### On a typical day, you might: - **Provide hands-on engineering leadership** by debugging complex issues at the code, API, and architecture level, writing scripts and internal tools in Python, JavaScript, and SQL to eliminate manual effort, and leading technical due diligence on major releases (e.g., CLARK). - **Lead and mentor a growing team** of technical reps and specialists, running 1:1s and huddles with technical mentorship, and building tailored development plans toward specialist and engineering tracks. - **Drive queue and operational health** using tools like Zendesk, Telescope, and Jira to manage workload distribution and align staffing with volume trends, while maintaining workflow, macro, and tagging documentation. - **Own team performance and resolution quality** by tracking TRT and FRT metrics grounded in technical understanding, ensuring solution correctness down to the code level. - **Manage critical escalations** by personally resolving a meaningful share of Tech-to-Engineering escalations directly, holding the overall escalation rate to 15%, and serving as the technical point of contact for manager-level issues. - **Partner cross-functionally** with Product, Engineering, and AI builders, representing your team's technical needs in planning/architecture conversations and tracking defects and enhancements in Jira with deep technical detail. - **Deliver actionable reporting** by building and maintaining Looker and SQL dashboards for productivity visibility, proactively flagging process or coverage risks, and contributing to broader Tech/CX initiatives. - **Drive AI optimization and internal tooling** by identifying automation candidates, personally building first-pass prototypes (auto-tagging, drafting, summarization), helping scale successful pilots to production, and evaluating LLM/API tooling for feasibility and cost. ### The ideal candidate will bring: - **5+ years of hands-on experience** in software engineering, technical support engineering, or SRE/DevOps-adjacent roles, with practical coding proficiency in Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, and SQL. - **1–2+ years of proven people management or team-lead experience**, with a focus on guiding and developing technical staff. - **Demonstrated ability to read and debug code**, evaluate system architecture, and conduct root-cause analysis directly alongside core Engineering teams. - **Strong technical fluency with APIs, webhooks, logs, and data pipelines**, with the ability to write scripts and queries independently. - **Hands-on experience with ticketing and reporting tools**, including Zendesk, Jira, Looker, or SQL-based dashboards. - **A proven track record of improving key operational metrics** (such as TRT and FRT) in a technical support or engineering-adjacent environment. - **Experience building, piloting, or working with AI-assisted tools** (e.g., LLM drafting, auto-tagging, summarization workflows). - **Adaptability and comfort in a fast-paced environment**, with a drive to adopt new tools, languages, and AI-assisted processes as technology evolves. - **Exceptional communication skills**, with the talent to move seamlessly between deep technical conversations with Engineering and plain-language framing for non-technical stakeholders.