Senior Engineering Manager, Dev Tools

Job description

**This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, which manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Senior Engineering Manager, Dev Tools based in Canada.** Join a mission-driven organization advancing the Ethereum ecosystem through open-source developer infrastructure and innovative engineering solutions. As Senior Engineering Manager, Dev Tools, you will lead two specialized engineering teams responsible for building and maintaining essential tools used by developers to create, test, compile, and deploy smart contracts. You will combine strong technical expertise with thoughtful people leadership to shape product strategy, guide architectural decisions, and deliver reliable, high-performance developer tooling. Working closely with engineers, product stakeholders, leadership, and the open-source community, you will establish a clear technical roadmap and align priorities across teams. You will foster a collaborative, autonomous, and high-performing remote engineering culture while supporting individual growth and long-term career development. This is an opportunity to make a tangible impact on the infrastructure powering decentralized applications and the broader future of blockchain technology. ### Accountabilities - **Technical leadership:** Provide technical direction across the Hardhat and Ethereum Development Runtime (EDR) teams, contributing to architectural discussions, design reviews, code reviews, and critical engineering decisions. - **Engineering strategy and roadmap:** Own the broader product vision and technical roadmap, translating ecosystem needs, developer feedback, and strategic priorities into actionable plans and long-term engineering objectives. - **Product delivery:** Guide projects from planning through implementation and release, ensuring timely delivery of high-quality features that meet user needs and technical standards. - **Project planning and execution:** Collaborate with engineers and product stakeholders to define minimum viable products (MVPs), establish milestones, assess feasibility, manage scope, and coordinate dependencies. - **Architecture and technical quality:** Promote scalable, maintainable, and robust software architectures, identifying technical risks and recommending improvements to system design, reliability, and performance. - **Team management and development:** Lead two engineering teams of approximately four and three engineers, supporting individual growth through regular feedback, mentorship, career planning, and thoughtful performance management. - **High-performing team culture:** Establish clear responsibilities, ownership boundaries, and team structures while fostering autonomy, accountability, collaboration, and continuous learning. - **Hiring and performance processes:** Develop and improve hiring practices, performance review processes, and career development frameworks to attract, retain, and grow engineering talent. - **Cross-team alignment:** Coordinate priorities and technical direction across engineering teams, ensuring consistency between related projects and alignment with broader organizational objectives. - **Stakeholder and community engagement:** Communicate proactively with leadership, product stakeholders, and the open-source community to gather feedback, clarify priorities, address concerns, and maintain alignment. - **Communication and transparency:** Clearly articulate team objectives, challenges, progress, and milestones while sharing relevant updates about wider organizational initiatives. - **Developer ecosystem impact:** Champion the team's achievements and ensure that engineering decisions support the long-term needs of developers building and deploying smart contracts across Ethereum. - **Process improvement:** Maintain effective engineering practices and lightweight processes that support quality, fast decision-making, and focused development without unnecessary bureaucracy. ## Requirements - **3–5+ years of direct engineering management experience**, including leading and developing engineering teams. Experience managing senior engineers or multiple teams in remote or asynchronous environments is particularly valuable. - **6+ years of technical leadership experience**, including leading complex engineering projects and defining or executing multi-year technical roadmaps. - Strong software engineering background, with proven ability to design and implement scalable, maintainable, and reliable software architectures. - Experience providing technical guidance through code reviews, architecture and design reviews, and product launch assessments, including identifying risks and recommending improvements. - Demonstrated ability to balance technical depth with people management, providing direction and support without micromanaging or unnecessarily imposing decisions. - Experience managing project delivery, including defining MVPs, evaluating feasibility, setting milestones, prioritizing work, and managing dependencies and risks. - Proven ability to collaborate with product managers and other stakeholders to translate user needs and market developments into technical strategy and product roadmaps. - Experience implementing or improving performance reviews, career development plans, and engineering recruitment processes. - Strong communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to explain complex technical topics clearly and build alignment across distributed teams. - Ability to foster an inclusive, respectful, and collaborative team environment that encourages individual ownership, continuous learning, and professional growth. - Strong organizational and strategic thinking skills, with the ability to connect day-to-day engineering decisions to broader product and ecosystem objectives. - Comfort working in a remote-first, asynchronous environment with a high degree of autonomy and responsibility. **Nice to have:** - Previous experience building developer tools, such as testing environments, deployment systems, build pipelines, or development runtimes. - Experience working with open-source software projects and distributed contributor communities. - Familiarity with TypeScript and/or Rust. - Experience contributing to blockchain infrastructure, Ethereum development tools, or related decentralized technology ecosystems. ## Benefits - **ETH grant:** A vesting grant denominated in Ether (ETH) as part of the total compensation package. - **Unlimited paid time off:** Flexibility to manage time away from work while meeting team and project responsibilities. - **IT equipment budget:** Financial support for the equipment needed to create an effective remote working setup. - **Annual learning and development budget:** Dedicated funding for professional development, technical learning, and skills advancement. - **Location-specific statutory benefits:** Benefits required by local law, depending on the employment contract and country of employment. - **Fully remote work:** Opportunity to work remotely from Canada, subject to the role's time zone requirements. - **Flexible, asynchronous collaboration:** A remote-first environment designed to support focused engineering work and effective collaboration across time zones. - **Mission-driven impact:** The opportunity to contribute directly to open-source infrastructure supporting the Ethereum developer ecosystem. - **Technical ownership and autonomy:** Meaningful influence over engineering strategy, architecture, product direction, and team development. - **Lean engineering culture:** Lightweight processes, robust engineering practices, and an emphasis on technical excellence and efficient decision-making. - **Professional growth:** Opportunities to mentor engineers, shape team culture, and develop leadership capabilities while working on critical developer infrastructure.