Senior Engineering Manager

We're looking for a Senior Engineering Manager to lead three engineering squads at JUPUS, one of the fastest-growing legal-tech companies in Europe. This is a people and process leadership role. You won't write production code, but you need to understand our stack (Django, Vue, PostgreSQL/pgvector, AWS, LLM-powered product) well enough to challenge technical decisions, assess feasibility, and hold a high bar on quality Reporting to the Head of Engineering, you'll own the operational excellence of three squads: how they run delivery cycles, how accurately they estimate, how consistently they follow process, and how effectively they ship. Your Challenge and Opportunity You'll be accountable for the predictability, throughput, and quality of the squads you lead. That means keeping initiatives moving cleanly through Discovery and Delivery, ensuring estimates are realistic and met, and leaving each cycle better than the last. This is a player-coach management role: your "playing" is managing, coaching, and process leadership, not committing code. You'll develop Engineering Leads and engineers, run cycle rituals, unblock teams, and drive cross-squad coordination. You'll also help us operate as a genuinely AI-native engineering organisation. Agentic coding is already our default, which means the bottlenecks have shifted: writing code is cheap, while verification, planning, and process discipline are where leverage lives. Your job is to reinforce the norms that serve us and pragmatically retire the ones that don't. You will be the person who makes our engineering process actually work day to day: enforcing it where it serves us, and pragmatically evolving it where it does not. Tasks Delivery Excellence & Cycle Ownership Own each squad's delivery cycle (planning, rituals, mid-cycle adjustments, and retrospectives) so cycles are predictable and improving Ensure every initiative flows correctly through Discovery, Refinement, Delivery, Rollout, and Post-Delivery, with risk surfaced early through timely feasibility assessments and spikes Drive estimation excellence: coach teams to produce realistic estimates, set milestones that emerge from them, and hold squads to committed dates Track and improve technical KPIs: lead time, PR cycle time, change failure rate, defect density, and date predictability Drive cross-squad coordination on shared initiatives, dependencies, and reusable components Process Leadership Enforce our Product Development Process consistently across all three squads; kick-offs, refinement, technical and testing plans, and delivery rituals are non-negotiable Ensure every squad member knows and follows the process. Gaps in adherence are a leadership failure, not an engineer failure Continuously evaluate processes and retire those that no longer serve us Team Leadership & People Management Manage, coach, and develop three engineering squads, owning their delivery health, team composition, and career development Develop Engineering Leads so they own technical feasibility, refinement, estimation, and delivery excellence within their squad Foster a culture of ownership, psychological safety, and high performance Own onboarding for your squads Technical Partnership Understand our stack (Django, Vue, PostgreSQL/pgvector, AWS, LLM/agentic AI pipelines) well enough to challenge decisions, assess feasibility, and ask the right questions, without writing the code yourself Partner with the CTO, Head of Engineering, Product, Design, and QE to keep delivery aligned end-to-end Translate technical complexity into clear trade-offs for both technical and non-technical stakeholders Running an AI-Native Engineering Organisation Champion agentic coding as the default way squads build, test, and refactor, with a "trust but verify" approach that concentrates human review where domain expertise, security, and product judgment matter most Identify repetitive workflows and drive their automation Track AI-native health signals such as onboarding ramp time, PR cycle time, and AI-assisted commit rate Requirements 6+ years in software engineering, with at least 2–3 years managing engineers and/or multiple squads Strong understanding of modern web architectures close to our stack (Python/Django backends, JavaScript/Vue frontends, relational databases (PostgreSQL), and cloud infrastructure (AWS)): enough to be a credible technical counterpart without being hands-on Working understanding of AI/LLM-powered products and agentic coding workflows, and a genuine point of view on how AI changes the way engineering teams operate Deep fluency in agile and iterative delivery: sprint/cycle management, estimation, backlog refinement, and a clear grasp of discovery vs. delivery Demonstrated ability to improve delivery predictability and engineering throughput through process and coaching, not just headcount Experience coaching engineers and leads and running honest performance and career conversations Excellent communication, stakeholder management, and decision-making in fast-moving environments Strong bias toward action, pragmatism, and shipping value incrementally Fluent in English Located within the CET -2/+2 time zone

Nice to Have

Proven track record managing more than one team at the same time, owning their delivery and growth Experience running or transforming a team into an AI-native engineering organization Experience in legal-tech, fintech, healthtech, or other regulated / high-trust domains Experience with DORA metrics or similar engineering-health measurement Experience scaling engineering processes and culture in a high-growth startup Benefits 🚀 Foundational Impact – Help define and scale how multiple squads operate and deliver during a high-growth phase 📈 High Ownership – Own the delivery, quality, and growth of several squads with direct influence on engineering strategy 🤖 AI-Native by Default – Lead in an organization where every engineer ships with agentic coding, and help shape what that looks like 🌱 Growth Environment – Build modern engineering processes in a fast-moving, product-focused organization 💼 Leadership Visibility – Flat hierarchy with direct access to the Head of Engineering and CTO 🏡 Fully Remote – Enjoy the flexibility of working from anywhere within CET -2/+2 💻 Top Equipment – State-of-the-art MacBook plus all the accessories you need 🏋️ Wellbeing Perks – Urban Sports Club membership in Germany to support your healthy lifestyle If you are energized by building high-performing teams, making engineering processes genuinely work, and leading squads into an AI-native way of working, we would love to hear from you. Apply To This Job