Engineering Manager

Hi, I'm Paul, VP of Engineering at Customer.io. We're always looking for thoughtful, driven Engineering Managers to add to our org. Some of our teams are building customer-facing product and workflows; others keep our distributed systems reliable, observable, and ready to scale. Whichever kind of problem energizes you, if you lead people well, hold a high technical bar, and drive work to completion without waiting to be handed a plan, we want to hear from you.

Over 9,000 companies—from scrappy startups to global brands—use our platform to send billions of emails, push notifications, in-app messages, and SMS every day. Customer.io powers automated communication that people actually want to receive.

We help teams send smarter, more relevant messages using real-time behavioral data—what people do or don't do inside a web or mobile app. Under the hood: Go, React, and AI help us ship fast and scale with confidence.

• →Care deeply about our customers and their outcomes
• →Lead your squad to deliver real customer value by owning projects end to end—from planning through delivery, quality, and follow-through
• →Drive execution: set milestones, keep work moving through ambiguity and competing priorities, and ship in small, observable increments rather than waiting for a release window
• →Make confident decisions when the path isn't obvious, and lead your team through them
• →Set the operating rhythm that helps your team move fastest, rather than defaulting to ceremony for its own sake
• →Ensure your squad's solutions are scalable, architecturally sound, flexible, and secure, with strong peer-review, QA, documentation, deployment, logging, and monitoring practices
• →Stay close to the work—jump into design reviews, architecture calls, and incidents rather than watching from a distance
• →Provide direct, timely, and specific coaching, and create meaningful development opportunities for your direct reports
• →Hire, onboard, and manage performance so the right people are in place to hit your squad's goals
• →Bring an AI-native perspective—use AI tools to accelerate the team's velocity and help everyone prototype faster and ship smarter
• →Partner across engineering and other departments to align efforts with customer success, and reach higher when our customers are having a bad day

• 3+ years managing engineers at a SaaS company (B2B or B2C), ideally early-to-mid-stage
• A track record of driving execution—concrete delivery outcomes with milestones, dates, and "I drove" ownership, especially in complex or fast-moving environments
• A strong technical background—you can hold your own in architecture conversations and design reviews, represent your squad's technical choices across the company, and you've shipped real work recently enough to stay credible
• Comfort operating with high autonomy and little prescribed structure—you create your own clarity and make difficult tradeoffs between competing priorities
• Demonstrated AI-native leadership—not just personal fluency, but bringing AI-first practices into how your team builds
• Experience building high-performing, inclusive, and collaborative teams
• Clear, concise, and direct communication, both verbal and written

No gotchas, no trick questions - just a clear, human process designed to help both of us make an informed decision.

1. Application - We review everyone with care.
2. Recruiter Call (30 mins) - Let's chat about what you're looking for, your leadership style, and how we work.
3. Hiring Manager Interview (60 mins) - Deep dive into your experience leading teams, your technical philosophy, and how you think about building organizations.
4. People Partner Interview (30 mins) - Explore your leadership style, management philosophy, and approach to supporting high-performing teams with our engineering people partner.
5. Technical Interview (60 mins) - Engage in a collaborative system design conversation focused on scaling challenges.
6. Take-Home Assignment - Submit a short written retrospective on a project you’ve led as an Engineering Manager.
7. Retrospective Review Call (60 mins) - We’ll use your written submission as the foundation for a deeper conversation.

All final candidates will be asked to complete a background check and employment verifications as part of our pre-employment process.