Engineering Manager

About Nexcess

Nexcess provides specialty cloud solutions for organizations where performance and compliance have to coexist. We serve businesses worldwide, from agencies scaling client sites to enterprises running mission-critical operations.

About Cloud Services

Cloud Services delivers the data protection, security, edge and value-add service products (SSL, email, EADN, and CDN/WAF) that keep our customers' applications safe and performant.

The Role

You will run and own one engineering team end-to-end: its architecture design, its delivery, and its roadmap. This is a hands-on engineering role, and you are the one person who answers for what the team lands.

How we work

• Business alignment and focus come first. Engineering here exists to move the business, not to be busy. You will pick the few things that matter most, say no to the rest with the Product counterpart, and deliver them on dates the business can plan around.
• This job is hands-on, and more so every quarter. You will write specs, review pull requests yourself, run the AI harness daily, and ship real work.
• Whoever ships it owns it, regardless of who wrote it. Managers are more accountable in the AI era.
• You will be Product's best friend. You shape the roadmap together with Product and make the trade-offs legible early.
• Your team goes on call for what it builds, and you take your turn on the rotation.

What we will measure

• Speed: DORA High, with Elite as the target.
• Predictable, reliable delivery of quality software.
• AI adoption and its impact, measured by AI-assisted outcomes.

What you will do

• Own architecture design, delivery and roadmap for your team.
• Own the engineering outcomes for Cloud Services' product space, including data protection, security, and edge services such as SSL, email, EADN, and CDN/WAF.
• Stay in the work by writing specs, reviewing pull requests, and shipping real changes.
• Run the AI harness yourself, and make your team run it.
• Scope and cut the work into estimated, monthly cycles with an explicit cut line, and report status honestly.
• Clear cross-team engineering dependencies before they block you.
• Hold the engineering bar that gets your team to DORA High and beyond.
• Grow your engineers through one-to-ones, growth plans, direct feedback, and owning hiring end to end.
• Own what you run, not only what you ship, including a fair on-call rotation and incident follow-through.

What you will bring

• 7+ years in software engineering, including at least one year leading engineers formally or informally.
• Hands-on technical fluency in Perl, PHP, React, and Vue; relational databases (Postgres, MariaDB); CDN; WAF; and server security.
• Currently hands-on, having shipped code recently and able to review AI-generated code.
• Real, hands-on AI-assisted engineering with quantifiable impact.
• Evidence you have made a team measurably faster, including knowledge of your DORA numbers.
• Experience delivering software to committed dates, operating a production on-call rotation, owning hiring, and leading engineers across time zones.

A must

Experience in managed hosting, cloud, or another high-availability service business.

Work Environment

• Regularly required to speak and hear, and to use hands for keyboarding and manipulation.
• Works at a desk and computer screen for extended periods of time.
• Works in a traditional climate controlled office environment or from home.
• Works in a highly stressful environment dealing with a wide variety of challenges, deadlines and diverse employee population.