Engineering Manager, EU

Overview

Hi 👋 I’m Colin, Director of Engineering, Europe. How do you feel about engineers writing product specs, making product decisions, and not breaking down projects into individual tickets? If that sounds exciting (even if a bit scary), read on because I’m looking for an engineering manager to help us build a different type of engineering team and culture at Ashby.

To start, why do we need to be different? Time and again, I have witnessed engineers knowing what needs to be done yet being unable to get things done because of “the process” or because “more data is needed.” Some of the most effective projects have been skunk works projects, where engineers have taken total ownership of a project and driven it to completion.

I want to normalize that at Ashby.

When we think about how these processes came about, we realize they carry a pessimistic mindset. They box people into smaller roles to minimize the chance of not meeting a certain standard. At Ashby, we’re building an environment that is optimistic about what engineers can own and achieve and embraces the innovative engineers (and frankly, often stays out of their way).

You’ll focus on building your team, their skills to thrive with the ownership they’re given, and an environment that empowers them to do their best work consistently, with little distraction. For junior EMs we try to stay within 6 direct reports. This enables them to spend time with our teams observing, correcting, praising, and, yes, coding. We like our managers to be hands‑on while also making sure they’re not on the critical path.

We’ve already gathered an experienced, talented, and collaborative team of 25+ engineers. You’ll help me manage the growing team of engineers in Europe.

• Provide feedback on product and technical specs to help engineers identify where to cut scope or improve quality. You don’t make the final decisions, but you’ll influence and coach ICs to reach the right ones.
• Grow engineers to the point where they can take large, loosely defined projects, and deliver them with little intervention. They still ask for help when needed – the difference is that they’re driving.
• Jump into our systems and code to debug a customer issue, ship a small bug fix, or improve our developer experience. Engineering leaders at Ashby are great engineers and enjoy keeping their skills up‑to‑date (while staying off the critical path).
• Improve how we generate and simulate data in demo accounts. It’s a project off the critical path, but it helps you keep up‑to‑date on our codebase while immensely impacting the business, from Engineering to QA to Sales.

• You love being technical and can hold in‑depth conversations with direct reports from infra to backend to frontend.
• You enjoy management problems. We want people who get excited about driving people to be their best, giving difficult feedback, and building systems that make this easier.
• You hold your team to a high standard and don’t shy away from getting into the details and giving feedback, even to the best folks on your team.
• You are an excellent and empathetic communicator. Facilitating change at both an individual and organization level requires understanding how to navigate the beliefs, opinions, and past experiences of engineers and figuring out how to both convince them of a new way of doing things while also leaving yourself open to feedback.
• You know what exceptional engineers look like. You’ve thought deeply about what makes them tick, how to recruit them, and how to grow folks into them. I want to see depth here, the industry often regurgitates a vanilla description, but the reality is more nuanced.
• You’re good at thinking about product, business, and maybe even design, but you’re not interested in calling the shots and are more interested in building a team that can make the best decisions without you.
• You thrive in high‑trust, high‑autonomy environments. We're a young startup where leaders wear multiple hats, and you'll build your own (high‑speed) on‑ramp through developing strong feedback loops.

• You don’t enjoy coding or…